We found a pic …

… of George's favourite airline.

COMMENT THREAD

Life is a cabaret, old chum …

I would take all this hyperventilation about Mandelson more seriously if the media had shown the slightest bit of interest in the Barroso/Latsis affair.

But, while the media seeks to dress up its obsession in clothes of concern about "corruption in high places", that – as we all know – is not the real reason for the vast expenditure of time and effort being devoted to this story. The media hasn't the slightest interest in "corruption" – especially its own. It is playing a game at our expense, having set itself the "target" of engineering a third resignation of Peter Mandelson.

Should it ever win its "scalp", we will see an orgy of triumphalism, following which the story will be dropped like a hot potato and the media pack will move onto its next "kill".

Meanwhile, as the prattlers preen and twitter, luxuriating in their own orgies of self-righteousness, what should be on the front pages, all the front pages, is this.

Europe is on the brink of a currency crisis meltdown, writes Ambrose Evans-Pritchard.

The financial crisis spreading like wildfire across the former Soviet bloc threatens to set off a second and more dangerous banking crisis in Western Europe, tipping the whole Continent into a fully-fledged economic slump... Currency pegs are being tested to destruction on the fringes of Europe's monetary union in a traumatic upheaval that recalls the collapse of the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992.

Yet, this is down page in the business section, competing for attention with the greater space afforded to a report headed How recession-proof is British sport?. Talk about "bread and circuses"!

These stupid, blind, empty, vapid, decadent fools will be the death of us all. But, even as they come hear the music play, if you listen carefully, you can hear the distant clatter of tumbrel wheels on the cobblestones. They are still a long way away, but they are coming …

COMMENT THREAD

Rectifying an omission

A correspondent takes me to task on my previous post and my reference to WEF meetings being little more than "high class piss-ups for over-paid inadequates", pointing out that I had failed to name names.

He draws my attention to page 19 of the parliamentary declarations of interest, and this entry:

Overseas visits

23-25 January 2008, to Davos, Switzerland, to attend and participate in the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, where I was invited to speak. The World Economic Forum provided my conference pass, occasional car use in Davos (including airport transfers) and some hospitality. (My flights and accommodation were paid for by the Conservative Party.)

You have to spool up to page 18 to discover the author of this commendable piece of candour. As for me, I couldn't possibly comment.

COMMENT THREAD

Has everyone gone completely mad?

No, this is not a posting about the hystérie du jour. When adjusting the clocks in the house I dialled 123 on my phone as I do twice a year to check the exact time, expecting to hear a measured male or female voice telling me in stately tones that "at the third stroke the time sponsored by Accurist will be....".

Instead, I got an excitable teenager with a transatlantic accent squawking: "Hi, this is Tinkerbell. At the third bell the time will be ...". Tinkerbell? Tinkerbell? Has everyone gone stark raving mad?

OK, "Peter Pan" is my least favourite children's classic and Tinkerbell is a nauseating little madam. Luckily for all concerned I did not spend my childhood in England and, therefore, avoided the yearly ritual of having to clap my hands so that Tinkerbell could live. Ugh. But that is not the point.

Even if the voice had been the honeyed tones of Long John Silver from what is undoubtedly a great classic and possibly the greatest adventure novel ever I would still spit with fury. What possessed BT to decide that we are all so infantilized that we cannot cope with simple information without it being conveyed by excitable transatlantic teenage squawking? I wish I could blame the EU for this but, sadly, I cannot. The madness is on this side of the Channel.

It occurs to me …

That if "a source close to the Tory leader" had given vent to his true feelings about George Osborne BOAP, the man would be sharing initials with a precursor to British Airways.

COMMENT THREAD

Fiduciary responsibility

Rightly, I think, we've focused heavily on the role of the regulators in this financial crisis, pointing to their considerable failures.

An unlikely ally now comes in the form of Kenneth Clarke MP who, in the Independent on Sunday today, has harsh words for the tripartite system of regulation between the Bank of England, the Treasury and the Financial Services Authority, which took away the Bank's supervisory powers.

"We had enough regulations in place to prevent this, but we just didn't have regulators who were up to it ... If the FSA had been more closely in touch with the banks," he says, "its staff could have spotted that the business models practiced by Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley were flawed."

He then argues that if the Bank of England had maintained it's banking supervisory powers, it would have seen and controlled the excessive lending by the banks. The FSA failed because it never really got into supervising the banking system. "All the Government's rhetoric was for a lighter touch. But the FSA is not there to be loved by bankers and ministers. It must be made of sterner stuff. It's too easy after the event to cry out for more and new regulation when, in most cases, it's already there," adds the former chancellor.

The Wall Street Journal, however, makes a different point. In an article headed, "Where were the boards?", it suggests that there is one very important question which has gotten little attention: Where were the boards of directors of the companies that helped create this mess?

Boards of directors, it says, set the guidelines and compensation levels, and in the end are ultimately responsible for the performance of their CEOs and companies. They have a clear-cut fiduciary responsibility to provide oversight. We should not ignore their roles in contributing to this financial meltdown.

Behind the CEO of every Freddie Mac, Bear Stearns or Lehman Brothers who led their company down a path toward financial ruin, says the paper, there was a board of directors that sat by silently and let it happen.

Interestingly, in his long, free-ranging interview with the IOS, Kenneth Clarke does not mention this issue at all, despite his declaration of interest in the Parliamentary register. But then, as a paid member of Advisory Board of Centaurus Capital Limited - a European hedge fund managing a billion pound portfolio and major shareholder in the Friends Provident insurance company, which is struggling to contain its losses – Mr Clarke wouldn't be wanting to talk about messy things like fiduciary responsibility, would he?

An even more interesting omission is highlighted by Clarke's comments to the IOS, where he tells the paper that it would be wrong to let the bankers drop the mark-to-market accounting standards. "That would be a terrible mistake and a step back," says Clarke. "It's the bankers, particularly the Europeans, who are trying to wriggle out of the mess they have got themselves into and blame something other than themselves."

How fascinating it is that the Centaurus Alpha Fund, owned by the company of which he is a member, announced last May a formal "Amendment of valuation methodologies", breaking away from mark to market valuation (as is permitted under certain circumstances). Instead the company decided that it would use the:

…latest available valuation provided by a relevant counterparty and as adjusted in such manner as the directors, in their sole discretion, think fit. If no such valuation is available, the directors will determine the value in good faith having regard to such factors as they deem relevant.

You might have thought that the IOS could have mentioned this interesting snippet to Mr Clarke, on top of his board membership of Centaurus Capital – detail of which is strangely absent from his profile printed in the article. But, since Clarke is also an non-executive director of the Independent News and Media (UK) group, which actually owns the Independent on Sunday, one supposes that the paper would not be too keen to upset him.

Funny old world, isn't it?

COMMENT THREAD

Another confession

Buried in The Daily Telegraph print edition (I seem to be relying rather a lot on this newspaper these days) is a piece, apparently not replicated on-line, headed "Davos organisers express regret over 'party years'".

Definitely coming under the category, "bit f*****g late now", it tells us:

Economists from the World Economic Forum have blamed "out of control" chief executives for treating its annual Davos summits like a luxury party rather than a serious conference.

Klaus Schwab, executive chairman of the WEF, said he regretted not forcing Wall Street and City executives to listen to the worries of leading economists about the credit bubble over the last five years.

Mr Schwab is now intent of returning the conference to its intellectual roots, based on the 1944 Bretton Woods forum that discussed rebuilding the global financial systems after the Second World War.

"The partying crept in," the 70-year-old economist said. "We let it get out of control and the attention was taken away from the speed and complexity of how the world's challenges built up".

The funny thing is that the WEF meetings have acquired much the same reputation as the Bilderburger meetings – rich and famous men meeting "behind closed doors to set an agenda for the global economy".

The sad truth though is that they were little more than high-class piss-ups for a bunch of over-paid inadequates. Would that they had been "setting the agenda", instead of leaving all the work to the grey bureaucrats of Basel.

Those tumbrels are going to be really busy when the people finally cotton on to what has been going on.

COMMENT THREAD

That North African river again

The trouble with you, Richard, one of my long-suffering friends observed, is that your idea of attacking someone is to stand at the door of a crowded bar and let loose at him with a double-barrelled shotgun. No wonder everyone dives for cover, friend and foes alike.

It is much better, he counselled, to go into the bar, shake the man by the hand, have a drink with him – and then slide a stiletto between his ribs. That way, you can be out of there, bidding everyone else a cheery good night, and no one will even notice it was you.

But hey! I haven't got where I am, living in a seedy Bradford suburb with a pension plan worth slightly less than a pair of second-hand whore's knickers – and going down just as fast – by heeding good advice.

Where was I?

Ah! Our target for tonight is Mr Andrew Pierce, that esteemed member of the fourth estate, highly respected and fêted by the chattering classes. In The Daily Telegraph today, he writes a long feature article headed, "Financial crisis: Our masters' summer of denial". And the strap tells you more: "What were our leaders doing as the credit crisis developed? Posturing and relaxing, says Andrew Pierce."

Now, don't get me wrong – this is a good piece, proving that the man has a brain and can write. His thesis is that, while the storm clouds of a financial meltdown gathered, the political elites were disporting themselves at Wimbledon and other salubrious venues, or indulging – as did the Labour Party – in an orgy of internal bickering over the leadership issue.

Regrettably, writes Pierce, in a stunning flash of originality, "Nero and Rome burning springs to mind." He then cites Tim Congdon, the economist who was an adviser to the last Conservative government, who says: "There has been a wholesale collapse of authority and competence in our ruling elite…".

Citing this piece with evident approval in the leader column, the writer unfortunately anonymous, we have another profound and well-written exegesis which sternly informs us that, "The politicians failed, and we will pay the price." In full flow, as the leader-writer develops his theme, we get:

The Bank's insouciance was encouraged by stupefying political complacency. In his Budget in March, Alistair Darling repeatedly insisted that Britain was better placed than almost all its competitors to face "economic turbulence". He cut his growth forecasts, yet still expected a 2.5 per cent expansion next year, a prediction that should warrant an inquiry into the quality of Treasury number-crunching. Why should we believe him now when he says the recession that he failed to predict will be less painful that previous slumps?

And then we are treated to this strident conclusion which has us cheering to the rafters:

Given the economic circumstances, the Conservatives should be 25 points ahead in the polls, but they have yet to find the right voice to vent the spleen of the nation - and have anyway spent the past week on the defensive over their shadow chancellor's summer antics in Corfu. Are the abiding images of an economic crisis to be these: the Bank of England Governor at Wimbledon while failing to cut interest rates soon enough; politicians luxuriating on the yachts of the super-rich; empty benches in Parliament despite the worst financial crisis for 80 years; a governing party concerned more with its own internal machinations than with dragging the economy back from the brink? At times like this, the political classes are meant to earn their corn. They flunked it and we will all pay the price.

But just hang on a minute. Where was the media when all the chaps were disporting themselves and pratting about with their internal squabbles? Do we recall posting one or two pieces making just tiny references to the media, with the odd suggestion or two that our revered fourth estate might possibly be missing the plot?

In general terms, we noted on 15 January 2008 the strange absence of the media from any serious debate about our plight, commenting on a piece by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, where we opined:

Actually, Ambrose was writing in the business section, a completely separate section where there is still some serious news. More and more, one gets the impression that there are two separate newspapers, one the main newspaper which should more rightly be known as the entertainment section, while the hard news is consigned to the business section.

More recently, as we were sinking into the doo doo, we actually wrote this:

Thus, when the prime minister calls a press conference in No 10 on the economic situation, with the chancellor of the exchequer standing beside him, and announces he is going to go to Paris, and tells the media that he intends to put forward his proposals "about how a stability programme can work for each country", you might just have thought that some of the assembled journalists – or even one – might on our behalf be just a little interested in what those proposals were, what the reception might be and sundry other details.

But no! This is our media we are talking about. First off in the questioning was that dreadful Nick Robinson, oozing with self-importance. He launches into a question about Brown's personal relations with Mandelson and why he picked him for a job in the cabinet. Brown answers the question only to get Robinson put a detailed supplementary, on exactly the same issue.

Many, many more pieces of a similar tenor did we write, the latest being this one - far too numerous to cite here, but if you google our site, using the search string "soap opera" you will find no shortage of comment, not least this and this, the latter actually bearing the title "a retreat into infantilism".

And now, having prattled and preened, itself indulging in the vacuous "soap opera" that has so dominated the headlines, The Daily Telegraph in the persons of Mr Andrew Pierce and others, has the unmitigated gall to write of "our masters' summer of denial", complaining that our political classes had lost the plot.

As to their own role, it seems to me that our media friends are also floating in that North African river. Now, where was that shotgun?

COMMENT THREAD

Keeping an eye on the monster

More from Helen on the Bruges Group blog.

The Rt Hon George Osborne, BOAP, MP

According "a source close to the Tory leader": "George has been a bit of a prat" (BOAP). This is retailed to us by The Daily Telegraph - on the front page in the print edition. Mr Heffer is even less kind.

Funnily enough, there is absolutely no mention of either piece in that sterling political blog, which charts the fortunes of the Conservative Party.

A little while ago, we conjured up a picture - meant to convey the full horror of the financial crisis – of a runaway train, the driver having leapt to safety, leaving no one at the controls. It was this image of no one actually in control that represented our worst nightmare.

In a conversation with a friend (I do have some left) this morning, however, we mused upon an even worse scenario. Imagine, if you will, terrified passengers, sensing something wrong with the train, struggling their way forwards, through the rocking and swaying carriages.

With the buffers looming on the near horizon, panic rising, they finally make it to the front of the train and, with the strength born of desperation, break through the locked door that separates them from their imagined salvation.

As they pour into the cab, what do they see? A suntanned George Osborne, the great political "tactician", slouched in the driver's seat with his feet on the dashboard. He is chatting animatedly to "Dave" on his Blackberry about the next move against Peter Mandelson.

Mr Heffer has it, methinks.

COMMENT THREAD

Our ruling elites

The man says there is not too much swearing in it. There is a bit, but it's still a good read.

COMMENT THREAD

They've noticed!

"There has been a wholesale collapse of authority and competence in our ruling elite…".

In The Daily Telegraph today. Where we lead, others follow.

COMMENT THREAD

The Tories aren't working

For a blog that is mainly concerned with EU politics (when we are not darting off to follow the hystérie du jour), we try to distance ourselves from domestic – and especially – party politics.

However, it has always been the case that our problems with the EU, and the very fact of our membership, lie not in Brussels but here. Never let it be forgotten that we remain in the EU because our Parliament as a body permits it. Within one day, if it so wished, it could repeal the European Communities Act, and we would be out.

What happens over here, therefore, is just as important to this blog as the other (some so-called) political blogs, perhaps more so as we are virtually the only major British blog which is consistently confronting the "elephant in the room", its continued presence illustrating the wilful determination of the political classes not even to recognise the existence of the problem, much less deal with it.

Between the two main parties, any expectation that this situation will improve is pretty forlorn but, of the two – in theory – there is a greater expectation (possibly entirely unrealistic) that it will be the Conservatives who will address some of the issues. It is, therefore, of some interest to us that this Party gets into office at the next election. This should have been a shoe-in but, given recent events, it is now not entirely certain.

To win – and then in any event, to form an effective government – the Conservatives must be, above all else, an effective opposition, and thence mount a credible campaign.

Thus, in a week when it was officially recognised that Britain was in recession and, on the day when the pound nose dived, the response of the shadow chancellor, George Osborne, was of some interest, his offering being posted on Tory Diary with the graphic reproduced below.


Osborne's textual response was as follows:

Once again, under Labour, the pound in your pocket is worth less. Indeed Gordon Brown has set a new record for Labour Governments, but it's not one he's likely to boast about. The 25 percent fall in the value of the pound over the last year is even greater than the devaluations under Jim Callaghan and Harold Wilson. It's a sign that international investors think Britain is badly prepared, as boom turns to bust.

This brought from me this pained response:

I do not think you even begin to understand how badly this type of "Tory tribalism" plays out in the real world. You may happily discuss how Mr Cameron has "decontaminated" the Tory brand, but what you need to understand is that the greater "contamination" is with the generic politician brand. This is making it worse.

Cameron was right in his early days when he pledged to end "Punch and Judy" politics, but we are seeing more of this than ever before - this post is a classic example. Iain Martin wrote an excellent piece in The Daily Telegraph yesterday pointing out that the impression with many voters was that the Tories were treating politics as a "game". I commented on this, applauding him. He was and is right.

The mood of the country has changed – is changing. You won't see it in the opinion polls (yet), but it is there. The polls don't ask the right questions and, in any event, people are not going to admit they are scared to total strangers. Half the time, they won't admit it to themselves. But people are worried, uncertain – afraid even. The mood is sombre, more than a little bit resentful and can quickly turn to anger.

To see this "Punch and Judy" stuff is not helpful. It comes over as lightweight and facile. We need "clinical" opposition – cold, dissection of the appalling policies of Mr Brown, and careful, sensible alternatives, delivered with gravitas and conviction.

In short, when times are hard – and they are going to get a lot harder – we need grown-up leadership. We can do without – as it comes over - a bunch of prattling, overgrown schoolboys scoring points off each other.

Picking up just one point from this, we aver that we need "clinical" opposition. This brings to mind the Saatchi poster of 1978 which is largely credited with winning the 1979 election for the Conservatives (illustrated at the top of this post).

What makes the poster so brilliantly effective, of course, is that it is brutally clinical. With one deft, but staged, photograph and a mere three words, it identifies with stunning precision the failure of Labour policy in a way that is both direct and unarguable. The punch-line, "Britain's better off with the Conservatives", is almost redundant – it is so self-evident.

Compare and contrast the Osborne graphic. Taken in with a quick glance, one of the more prominent features is a series of red ticks. This is a positive image. The "Labour government check list" is, on first sight, being given the thumbs up.

The heading itself is also positive. It speaks of the Labour government, a word that still conveys authority and prestige. There is none of Saatchi's economy, which would have said: "Labour's check list".

As for Labour's sins, these are the least prominent part of the graphic but, alongside the bright red "ticks" - signifying approval - you could almost take them as "good things". As to whether they unarguably represent Labour failings, that is … arguable. More borrowing in a recession is, according to Keynesian theory, a good thing. Certainly, the government would argue this, in a way that it would never hold that unemployment is ever good.

Looking at the text, which should not detain us long, not only is its tone petulant, but it is also "bubblespeak". The reference to the devaluations under Jim Callaghan and Harold Wilson calls up ancient history, of which the bulk of the population will be entirely unaware. It has absolutely no relevance to our current situation. This is a political insider speaking, not someone who is reaching out to his audience and trying to identify himself with its concerns.

If this sort of dross continues, opposition leader David Cameron will go down in history as a political genius. He will be the only leader of a political party who lost an absolutely unloseable election. And that takes real genius.

COMMENT THREAD

Not quite there yet …

A comment on the Metric Martyr's "victory":

The only victory here is when the Directive is dead and buried with a stake through its heart and a silver bullet lodged in its brain, the casket surrounded by a moat of Holy Water and surmounted by a garland of garlic, with the Pope standing guard, brandishing a chalice containing the mortal remains of Jesus Christ. Even then, you can never be sure ...

We are not quite there yet, I suspect.

COMMENT THREAD

Delayed reaction

One thing I have learned – of many – is that if you are in the prediction business, you may be right in your general thrust but very often things happen much more slowly than you predict.

You can, like the man with the sandwich board, parade up and down the streets with the message, "the end is nigh," on the basis that, sooner or later, it is going to happen. And when it does, you can claim you were right. Furthermore, usually, after every cataclysmic event, someone will emerge from the woodwork claiming that they had exactly forecast what would happen. They too can claim they were right.

However, this recession is different. Any intelligent observer, we aver, could see it coming a mile off. To that effect, I looked back through our own archives and, in particular, smiled wryly at this piece:

Anyone with any political awareness and an understanding of how we are governed, and how we should be governed, cannot help but feel gloomy at the prospect. I cannot be alone in wondering quite how much longer this nation can survive under a Labour administration.

As if that is not enough, many pundits are quite seriously suggesting that 2005 will be a year of recession and some go further to predict that we could well see an economic collapse on the scale of the events that triggered the 1929 depression.

I wrote that on 1 January 2005 and, alright, I was three years early on the headline. In fact, we were not that far wrong. Much of the "real economy" has been in recession for well over a year, but Mr Brown and his merry men have messed around so much with the economic statistics that they no longer give an accurate - or any - picture of what is going on. That a recession is now headline news simply reflects the fact that "them up there" have finally noticed, or that it is so obvious that even fudging the figures cannot conceal it any longer.

That notwithstanding, we had this piece on 24 June 2005 and I was quite pleased with this piece in April 2007. This, entitled, "cartoon physics revisited", considered the cartoon convention that determined that characters which went over the cliff never started falling until they looked down and saw that there was nothing underneath them.

At the time, I distinctly recall telling anyone who would listen that we were in that position, that a collapse could occur any time. It is just that it took the world banking system until this autumn before it looked under its feet and saw nothing but thin air.

We re-visited the prospect of a global crisis many more times, but one that stands out is this on 13 March 2008 and we had also picked up on Ambrose Evans Pritchard here, earlier in the month on 3 March 2008.

Ambrose gets a lot of stick for always warning of impending doom, but his predictions have been not far wrong. The only thing you can criticise is his timing, but that is – as we have suggested – the nature of the beast.

The one we can put our finger on, as a more or less definitive piece was that one here, on 4 January 2008, when we said the economy was living on "funny money". We all know this – "everybody", it seems, except the "experts". It was dead obvious that we were heading for a fall. Randall and others were saying the same. Everybody saw it but the "experts".

It is now that these same "experts" who are telling us that this great disaster was "unexpected" – the same experts in whom we are supposed to trust to get out of this mess? That trust, as it stands, is wafer thin.

The piece I wrote yesterday, headed This is not a game, retailed Iain Martin's sentiments about the Tory party. Martin is one of the better of the paper's columnists, and his writings show that he has enough "real world" contact to be able to break out of the bubble occasionally and capture the wider mood.

I think he caught a whiff of that "real world" in yesterday's piece. Some 200 miles north of the Westminster "bubble" and the chattering elites, we here get a stronger whiff of it.

And we may be taking about social issues here – the behaviour of people – but there is an engineering parallel. If you fire up a boiler, and then weld down the safety valve, sooner or later, that boiler is going to blow. We can't say when – there is always a delayed reaction – and some of those old Victorian boilers were massively over-engineered and have a huge safety margin.

But, there is one certainty. Delayed reaction or not, it is going to blow. When it does, it will not only destroy the boiler, it will bring the whole building down with it - and half the neighbourhood. When that happens, the phalanxes of cosy, fat complacent MPs will need more than a handful of machine-gun toting police to protect them.

As Mr Martin says, this is not a game. Our gilded elites can find out the hard way, or the easy way. But, one way or another, they will find out.

COMMENT THREAD

Planet? Which? On?

The financial crisis gripping world markets is "the worst in human history" and we are only just beginning to feel the fallout, the Deputy Governor of the Bank of England has warned.

That joyous piece of news comes to us courtesy of The Daily Telegraph website. But, you don't have to be the Deputy Governor of the Bank of England. We said that last night, for free.

But you do have to wonder quite what our financial geniuses do for brains (or where they keep them) when you get from Emmanuel Roman, chief executive of GLG Partners, Europe's biggest hedge fund, the stunning news that, "thousands of hedge funds are on the brink of failure as the global economy contracts with unexpected severity."

Unexpected? ... U n e x p e c t e d?

Planet? Which? On? Is this man? We’ve seen it coming for years, said so, written it, warned of it. And this man runs a hedge fund?

However, Roman goes on to say, "There need to be some scapegoats, and the regulators are going to go hunt people…". A very good target, it seems to me, could well be Mr Emmanuel "head-up-backside" Roman. But, as another thought, who is going to go after the regulators, when the industry scapegoats have been driven over the cliff?

COMMENT THREAD

Oh, what a jolly jape!

The House of Commons public administration committee, under the chairmanship of Dr Tony Wright, started yesterday an inquiry into "good government" – in, of all places, the Thatcher Room in Portcullis House.

This, according to the genial Wright, was an opportunity to stand back from the "daily grind" to take a "reflective view" about "how we do government". There were three main issues said Nick Raynsford, the first of four witnesses with "deep ministerial experience", the other three being Kenneth Clarke, David Blunkett and Peter Lilley. Those issues, said Raynsford were "administrative, political and cultural".

The transcript of the proceedings is not yet up on the Parliament site, but the video can be watched here and Andrew Gimson has a report in The Daily Telegraph.

Needless to say, Gimson goes for the lightweight tat, but not entirely so. He records an intervention from committee member, "new boy" Charles Walker MP, on the financial crisis (see 1 hour 28 mins onwards on the video).

Walker expressed dismay at the failure of MPs to seize the chance to speak on the financial crisis in last week's debate in the Banking Bill. That debate, we are now told, had collapsed for lack of speakers at nine in the evening, when in Mr Walker's opinion it should have gone on until 4.30 the next morning.

This led Walker to ask whether Parliament had risen to the challenge or had declined into a mere rubber stamp. "What is the point of Parliament now?" he asked. "Is it a purely a supine lapdog?"

Clarke, without turning a hair, acknowledged the point – but only partially. He admitted that the Commons "was certainly more powerful when he was first elected to it in 1970". "The Parliamentary process," he said, "is now infinitely weaker than it was". Now, why would that be, we wonder? Let me think, now, what happened after 1970 that could have made a difference? Gosh! That's a really, really hard one!

Not, of course that the smug, jovial europhile Clarke offered any explanation of why that might really be. Skirting around the subject with a welter of detail about his ministerial career, to the evident approval of the smiling Wright, the happy chappies still had time to share a jolly jest about ministerial reshuffles.

Clarke even managed to talk some sense, noting that the constant intervention of the government into wider and wider areas of our lives had led to an "infantalisation of the public, who are led to believe that any problem that they face is the fault of their political masters who are expected to sort it out in the next two or three weeks."

This we see every day of the week and the point was well made. But, entirely missing from the discussion or any of the evidence submitted were those two words – "European Union". Here, we have a whole committee discussing earnestly "how we do government" and nothing, absolutely nothing is said about our government(s) over there in Brussels, Basel and beyond.

The cri de coeur from Charles Walker thus goes unheeded, unanswered and ignored. The elephant in the room slumbers on undisturbed while our fatuous, preening, smug, over-paid MPs prattle on regardless and the noble representatives of the fourth estate happily twitters away in the lower reaches of his newspaper to the jolly entertainment of us all.

All of these happy chappies no doubt returned to their little pads that evening, content that they had done a jolly good day's work and that they were well worth the money they had been paid. But, if you listen carefully, you can hear the distant clatter of tumbrel wheels on the cobblestones.

COMMENT THREAD

A smell of decadence

It is probably too far-fetched a comparison, but – as one watches the train-wreck of the world economy lurch over the precipice – one begins to detect a whiff of something that smells rather like the Weimar culture.

There is that same loss of moral compass, an air of decadence, the same hedonistic approach to life, the obsession with sex, culture, entertainment - the same "live for today" feel, with the chattering classes preoccupied with "self" and their own petty obsessions, oblivious to the impending disaster, only just over the horizon.

Thus does the entry on the period record that writers such as Alfred Döblin, Erich Maria Remarque and the brothers Heinrich and Thomas Mann presented a bleak look at the world and the failure of politics and society through literature. And it is that phrase, "the failure of politics and society" that really strikes a chord.

No one, but no one with any sense of perception can look at the contemporary political scene – on a global scale – and suggest that it is anything else but dysfunctional, while Cameron's theme of the "broken society" rings all too true, even if (or especially if) he has no recipe for mending it.

It was this sense of detachment from reality that struck me most in yesterday's leader in The Daily Telegraph, rightly calling for a "a new man to run the Bank of England".

But what was chilling – perhaps unintentionally so – was the paper's observation that, during the tumultuous events of recent weeks … one figure has been curiously absent from the public stage: Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England.

He, said the paper, "has been the Invisible Man of the banking crisis," finally breaking cover on Tuesday night to deliver the news - blindingly obvious to most people for some time - that the economy is in recession. It added:

Mr King's analysis of what went wrong in the banks was - as befits a respected academic economist - lucid and detailed. What was missing from his exegesis was any sense of self-awareness. He gave the appearance of a thoughtful onlooker at a particularly nasty accident. Yet under his stewardship, the Bank's actions, or rather lack of them, have contributed significantly to the crisis.

A week or so ago, we were reaching the same conclusion about King and were preparing a post on him, provisionally headed, "the guilty man".

Read up on the Bank of England and you will find here, the declaration that the Bank "exists to ensure monetary stability and to contribute to financial stability". We are told here of the vital need for a "stable financial system" and that it is "a key ingredient for a healthy and successful economy." And we read weighty tomes about how the BoE went about its job.

We also noted from the FSA website that, while it is the regulator of all providers of financial services in the UK, the "Bank of England retains responsibility for systemic risk."

As far as the near-collapse of the UK financial system goes, therefore, all roads lead to the Bank of England and at the top of the heap stands Mervyn King, the Governor. Yet, as The Telegraph notes, absent was "any sense of self-awareness," any suggestion that he might have been in any way responsible for the disasters that have struck our economy.

As if this was not remarkable enough, there is also entirely lacking within the entire political system any sense of questioning or outrage about the role of King, even though he is a political appointee and clearly has the support of the prime minister.

Thus is King allowed to float serenely above the fray, unquestioned, unchallenged, a grand figure untouched by the troubles and mayhem all around him, as if it had nothing at all to do with him.

More troubling, this aura of unreality seems to extend far wider. To judge from the media, which is still obsessing about Mandelson and Osborne, and its usual diet of tat and trivia, one could almost get the impression that the financial crises that dominated the headlines so recently were all over. Thus did the Telegraph parade as its lead story yesterday a report on children of five to be given sex education.

But the crises are far from over. In anything, we are about to enter a new and more dangerous phase, with not banks at risk of collapse, but whole countries, their currencies and economies.

The danger is graphically illustrated today by Anatole Kaletsky in a story headed, "A new set of financial skittles is ready to fall", as he charts what he calls "a series of powerful aftershocks." This, he writes, "has been shaking Hungary, Ukraine, Russia, Argentina and many other countries on the periphery of the global financial system, threatening not only their economies, but even their systems of government."

Kaletsky, however, refers to "aftershocks", but it would be unwise to assume that the damage can be contained and that there will be no "contagion" spreading to the larger economies – that we will be untouched by it all. In fact, the signs are building of that most dangerous of all financial phenomena, a global currency crisis, which could have the pound, the yen, the dollar and the euro all under extreme pressure.

"Nobody has any idea. No one ever gets it right and no one thinks that they can get it right," says Charles Goodhart, Professor Emeritus of Banking and Finance at the London School of Economics and a former Monetary Policy Committee member, referring to the treacherous path trodden by those who predict movements in currency markets.

In a time when the financial experts have so comprehensively failed us, where the greatest banking crisis in living memory sneaked up on these experts unaware, where the experts have been consistently dismissing the idea of a global recession, where those same experts have been predicting the end of "boom and bust" and unending prosperity built on a mountain of debt, we can have no confidence whatsoever that any of these wonderful experts has the first idea of what is going to happen.

The array of City analysts, economists and strategists and all their tawdry hangers-on can make all the predictions they like but, on recent form, the only thing on which we can rely is that they will get it wrong – again, and again and again.

But, whatever happens, the "Weimar culture" of today's society will glide on serenely unaware of events, locked in its own tiny, obsessive, self-referential bubble, until the whole edifice crumbles around it. If it is then shocked at the outcome we, at least, will have some idea of the sort of thing that will come next.

COMMENT THREAD

It would rather not say …

You get a "feel" for parliamentary written questions, as to whether the government wants to answer or not. If it is something it is happy to reveal, you usually get a very full answer and sometimes more information than you asked for.

Terse answers, grudgingly giving you the minimum information sufficient to qualify as an answer but no more, thus tell you a great deal. This one, therefore, speaks volumes:

Ann Winterton: To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether the UK may withdraw unilaterally from the Mark to Market rules under European Union legislation. [226867]

Ian Pearson: UK groups are required to use International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), including those relating to valuation, when preparing their accounts. IFRS are set by the International Accounting Standards Board and adopted for use inside the EU under the relevant legislation by the member states of the EU and the European Parliament.

They could have specified the EU legislation, but they did not. Furthermore, they could have answered the question properly. The requirement to use mark to market is set out in Directive 2006/49/EC (Annex VII) as well as International Financial Reporting Standards, set out here.

These IFRS, of course, are given legal effect by Commission Regulations made under the aegis of Council and European Parliament Regulation (EC) No 1606/2002, the latter declaring:

International Accounting Standards (IASs) are developed by the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC), whose purpose is to develop a single set of global accounting standards. Further to the restructuring of the IASC, the new Board on 1 April 2001, as one of its first decisions, renamed the IASC as the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and, as far as future international accounting standards are concerned, renamed IAS as International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). These standards should, wherever possible and provided that they ensure a high degree of transparency and comparability for financial reporting in the Community, be made obligatory for use by all publicly traded Community companies.

The main Commission Regulation is (EC) No 1725/2003, amended several times, most recently by (EC) No 1004/2008 of 15 October 2008.

Details and links to legislation can be found here, a site that took some finding. Although International Accounting Standards (IAS) have been renamed as IFRS, the commission has not amended its site title which means, of course, it does not show up in any search for the IFRS.

Difficult though the details may be to tease from the EU website, such things have to be dragged from the government. It really, really does not want you to know who (or what) runs this country.

COMMENT THREAD

Another day, another admission

Typically, the journos miss the point, although this article is by Richard Spencer - a China hack, not a financial specialist.

However, because Howard Davies, former head of the Financial Services Authority, is speaking in Peking – no doubt after flying out first class and being put up in a five star hotel – his views are reported by Spencer, who focuses on Davies's comments about Iceland.

This is fair enough – Spencer is a half-way decent journalist – but embedded in his story are some much more tastier fish. For instance, Davies opines that, "Financial regulation is too heavily dominated by Europe and America," in what is described as "a sweeping attack on the failure of economic control systems to heed warnings about impending crisis."

Thus, we are told, Davies "contradicted the notion that the breakdown in financial markets had come as a surprise." He says "economists and others had been drawing attention to the imbalances in the world economy for years," but "regulators and politicians were too slow to react, and when they did, failed to co-ordinate their positions despite the globalised economy."

Well, knock me down with a feather. All these high-priced "suits" lapping up the cream in their gilded offices did know after all? When economic illiterates like us were picking it up in 2004 and 2005 - and we’re a political blog, I suppose we can be thankful for small mercies that they were aware that something was going down. But, it seems, when it happened, they were "too slow to react". Can't have everything, I suppose.

Even at a relatively late state though, we imagine, intervention could have taken the edge off the crisis, especially as those world-class financial experts were writing of the situation:

All of this invokes vague presentiments of gloom and there are plenty of bears ready to sustain fears that we are on the brink of economic meltdown. Small wonder we are agape as Gordon Brown continues to parade his "economic competence". We seem to living on "funny money" and no one seems to want to take responsibility.

Waaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh …

That was us, the economic illiterates, writing in January of this year under the heading, "funny money". And the "suits" didn't notice something then, and think about taking action?

But never mind, Howard Davies, one of the "suits-in-chief" is now on the case. From his gilded palace in Peking, he loftily tells us that the European Central Bank brought the extent of the crisis to public attention in August last year, by pouring in liquidity into the system. But, he complains, "the first comprehensive international summit to address the crisis is not taking place until this November or December, 16 months later." So! They didn't think about taking action!

Unabashed, Davies moves on to give as an example of the problems in the regulatory sector the "reforms" to the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision guidelines. These, he says, took ten years to produce. If a bank decided to reform its rules on risk management but took ten years to do so "people would say you were mad", he admits. And what does that make the Basel Committee?

Then, of course, we get part of the explanation: "It was telling that of 13 nations represented on the committee, ten were from Europe," says Davies. And, surprise, surprise, "Even the European Union had been unable to act in concert when the crisis struck."

Is it just me, or do I sense that we have a gang of people here who are simply not up to the job, running regulatory systems designed for the Stone Age? Well, Mr Davies, God bless his silken socks and his $1000 suits, seems to agree. "We need to improve the legitimacy of bodies that set international standards," he says. "The ones we have reflect the world as it used to be not as it is."

And the word from Parliament about all this is?

Can we even begin to hazard a guess as to when our honourable and dligent MPs are going to notice that there has been a king-sized global regulatory cock-up, and make some intelligent comments about it?

"Hush yore mouf chile! Dey iz de man!" comes a voice from the darkness. "Yo mussn't sez zose fings!"

COMMENT THREAD

This is not a game

Two days in a row, we find ourselves in almost total agreement with a Daily Telegraph columnist. Yesterday, it was Heffer and today it is Iain Martin.

The target of our approval today muses on the state into which the Conservative Party has descended, observing thus:

The metropolitan elite into which the Conservatives are being sucked is not actually particularly interested in ideas, or reform, and, unfortunately, senior Tories have too often given the impression - crucially, not Cameron himself - that they have become so pragmatic that they long ago forgot what they hope to achieve by winning office.

Having an ideological compass is what matters when the water gets choppy. Unless a new government has a clear idea of what is wrong with the country and a plan to do the hard work of reform to fix it, then its ministers will be blown about and will achieve little.

There is much that needs addressing in Britain - what with flat-lining social mobility, a crushed economy and the threat to free markets - and there is little time for more frivolity. This is not a game, but this week many voters will be thinking the Tories regard it as just that.

Martin, I think, is capturing the mood of the nation, from which the Westminster chatterati, in their little bubble, seem horribly insulated. If they are not very careful, they will be like the French ancien regime who first discovered quite how unpopular they were when the tumbrels arrived at the front gate to take them to the guillotines.

The new mood is partly captured in an interesting exchange on the Tory Diary comment section, with yours truly playing away from home again. But it clearly has not percolated Iain Dale's blog, where he insists on scoring PMQs as if they were a football match.

For sure, politics does not have to be serious all the time and, as Jim Greenhalf illustrates in his latest post – with quotes from Aneurin Bevan's speech on the British invasion of Suez in 1956 - humour and irony can be deadly weapons in the right hands. If we were any good at using either, we would try them more often. A cudgel is more our style.

With due respect to Iain Dale, who does actually put in a lot of work and does occasionally produce some good material, I do wish he would stop his silly "scorecard" posts on PMQs. I know a lot of MPs hate it and squirm with embarrassment at the trivialisation of what should be a serious occasion. It does them no favours.

And if you need any reminding about how serious it all is, The Daily Telegraph today retails a report that suggests 20,000 more pensioners could die this winter as they try to cut back on heating following the sharp rise in energy prices.

We take issue with the focus entirely on the rise in energy prices. Energy costs are also inflated by the government's "Carbon emission reduction target" (CERT), the EU's emission trading scheme, the Renewables Obligation and, of course, VAT. Apart from VAT, none of these costs are declared on utility bills yet they are substantial additions, set to increase even further.

Yesterday, in PMQs, Mr Cameron called for more transparency in accounting while Lib-Dem leader Nick Clegg wept crocodile tears about fuel poverty. Yet both parties, as far as I am aware, support policies which add these costs to energy and presumably, support the idea that pensioners, dying in isolation and penury for want of being able to afford them, should be kept unaware of their existence.

Thus, as Mr Martin so rightly cautions, this is not a game. Voters are going to be in a pretty unforgiving mood if politicians – on both sides of the House – do not wake up to that simple fact.

COMMENT THREAD

Factoid alert

According to Bloomberg, Britons waste £900 million ($1.5 billion) a year by leaving lights, televisions and other electrical appliances switched on when they're not needed. This gem came to them via the UK Energy Saving Trust.

Let's see now: 60 million people and 365 days a year. For each of us, that works out at about £15 each per annum or 4p a day, if my arithmetic is correct. This, I believe, is not going to break the bank.

COMMENT THREAD

Out of bubbles

We are now out of bubbles and ability to support bubbles, and America (and the world, in fact) is out of the ability to support more debt.

Jaan Kenbrovin would be turning in "his" grave: "I'm forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in the air...".

COMMENT THREAD

A contributory factor

I had intended to write a long post on the Defence of the Realm blog on the coroner's inquest report on the Hercules crash in Iraq in January 2005 – breaking my long silence on that blog. The analysis – which will be written - is intended make points which have general implications, well beyond the defence field. Particularly, I will tackle the media treatment of the report – hence my posting here as well.

The coroner's findings are reported in The Daily Telegraph and, within the limitations of the media, I thought Stephen Adams wrote a fair and balanced piece – less so the headline.

In particular, Adams pointed out that there were numerous causes of the deaths of the ten servicemen involved. One of those was the absence of fire suppressant foam in the fuel tanks. But that was a "contributory factor". There were other failings, by the military, which were more immediately led to the tragic incident, not forgetting that the primary cause was the enemy, who shot the aircraft down.

But if Adams managed to balance the story – based on the good sense of the coroner's report – not so the BBC. I listened to radio reports, and watched a report on television news. In all instances, only the absence of suppressant foam was detailed. Although the announcers did state that this was a "contributory factor", none of the others were mentioned, leaving the casual listener or watcher with the idea that the major fault was with the "penny pinching" MoD - the classic BBC "narrative".

Regular readers will know that I am no friend of the MoD. But the BBC report was neither balanced nor fair. Nor did it do its audience any favours, giving them a distorted view of the incident.

However, it is late (at the time of writing) and I am too tired to do the subject justice. I will, therefore, write more of this later, on DOTR, picking up also on other incidents in, I hope, a "catch-up" piece.

COMMENT THREAD

In hiding

She's still here, but hiding over at the Bruges Group Blog, while this half of the partnership does his best to drive away our remaining readers with his obsessive rants. Go there and enjoy, especially the latest piece about Mr Redwood!

Have a look at Jim Greenhalf as well, if you have a moment. He's a hack, but one of a rare breed, an honest hack. I rely a lot on him for his wisdom and advice, most of which I don't take which makes me the fool, not him.

As a print journalist all his life, Jim is feeling his way round his blog at the moment - a new medium for him - trying to find a niche. But he is posting some good stuff.

Listen to this man!

In The Daily Telegraph letters today (no link) you will find Mr J.C. Hodee of Newport, Pembrokeshire, under the heading: "Why years of power cuts are certain to come." Sir, he writes:

The design life of our major power stations is 35 years and nearly all are near to this or have exceeded it.

As a former consulting engineer for major power plant construction, I know that the minimum time in this country to plan, design, construct and reliably commission a base-load fossil fuel power station is five years and 10 years for a nuclear station.

This, of course, is without the interference of disruptive groups.

We are in for several years of progressively severe load shedding and power failures, owing to the dismemberment by the Tories of the Central Electricity Generating Board and subsequent lack of forward planning by the Labour Government and the foreign companies that now own our power generating and distribution system.

Have no doubt about it, the situation is serious, and the recent ill-conceived collusion with the French will do little to alleviate the problem.

This is no more or less than we have heard from any number of experts, the issue having been rehearsed endlessly on this blog. This is the voice of reality, not the posturings of the mad warmists predicting some vague disaster sometime in the future, sometime never.

We are going to get power cuts, unless we do something soon. The problem is already on us with the quota limitations on the coal-fired stations imposed by the EU's Large Combustion Plants Directive. Now, we know this is that nasty European Union and we don't like talking about it. But hiding your head under the covers won't make it go away!

I am old enough to remember the misery and uncertainty of Heath's three-day week and the constant power cuts. It was not fun, it was not an adventure. And this time it will be worse, not least because we are so much more reliant on electricity for our infrastructure. Cut the power to the computers which run the infrastructure of our nation and the nation stops functioning – period.

So, wake up children! The bogy man is coming and mummy won't be able to turn on the lights!

COMMENT THREAD

Suffer ye the little children – no more!

We do not always agree with Heffer – who could, especially when he launches off on one of his ill-informed "man in pub" rants? But this time, he is absolutely spot on. Bang on the button! There is hardly a word in his piece with which we could disagree.

"Members of Parliament," he writes, "receive a bad press these days and, given their performance in recent weeks, richly deserve it". He then goes on to complain, rightly and volubly, about the failure to recall Parliament during the height of the financial crisis and, more pointedly, the lack of demands by MPs to have it recalled.

Much more follows – every word should be read and savoured – Heffer’s view being that politics in Britain has ceased to be a calling and has now become a career. "With that," he concludes:

… the idea of MPs ever having the independence to do properly the job that the constitution expects of them went right out of the window. Perhaps they should stay on holiday.

I have to say that, watching on television the disgusting scenes on PMQs today, one can only agree. Speaking personally, I am sick, sick, sick to the back teeth and beyond of these idiots bickering and squabbling amongst themselves while the country goes gurgling down the plug hole. It is as if someone left open the playpen and the children have taken over the nursery.

But there is a caveat here. It is not just them, as we pointed out in an earlier piece. On the one hand, we let them get away with it but – just as importantly – on the other, when on the rare occasions MPs behave like grown-ups, we do not notice or applaud them.

Thus, it is us as a well, us as a collective, who are at fault. This is a representative democracy. In theory, our MPs hold our Executive to account and, in turn, we hold our MPs to account.

In a properly functioning democracy – if there is such a thing – this is more than just ticking a box on the ballot sheet during an election. There are still public meetings where we can make our views known and MPs hold "surgeries" where we can meet them in person. We can go to Westminster and lobby them personally and we can – under strict license these days – demonstrate outside the Houses of Parliament.

Some of us are in that "gilded circle" – some circles bigger than others, or more exclusive - where we meet MPs socially, or on business. There, we can make our views known to them, perhaps over dinner or under the blazing sun in a Paris restaurant, consuming a delicious steak (did you really think I went to Paris just to take pictures of toys?).

More prosaically, we write letters to them and - these days - send e-mails. We comment on their activities in the local and national press, in the letters columns, and by putting up comments on the online editions of newspaper articles and leaders. For a fortunate few, we have direct access – or access one step removed - to the media and are able to pen our thoughts more directly.

We also have more modern means of expressing our approval (and disapproval). We have blogs, their comments section, and the forums. Some of these are picked up by the MSM and retailed onwards to a wider audience. In short, there have never been so many opportunities for us to make our views known to our MPs.

Thus, while Heffer quite rightly rails against MPs for rolling over and looking after their own interests, we are not without blame. As a matter of constitutional fact, Parliament is sovereign in its own House. If the Executive runs roughshod over its rights, it is because Parliament permits it. Equally, if MPs as part of that collective fail to do their jobs and allow this to happen, it is because we permit it.

The uncomfortable truth of this, therefore, it that a great deal of the responsibility for the present state of affairs lies with us ourselves. Democracy, I wail, is not a spectator sport, but just because I am a lone voice in a tiny corner of the blogosphere does not make me wrong (and neither does it make me right – but that is another story).

But, while it is quite evident that the political system has gone off the rails – with endless discourse about apathy and disillusionment with politics – amongst the chatterati what have we seen?

Apart from a pedestrian and tardy contribution from Greg Hands on Centre Right on the lack of a Parliamentary debate over Brown's rescue plan, where has been the clamour on the blogosphere for that debate - for greater Parliamentary involvement? Apart from this blog, where have been the expressions of outrage amongst the political bloggers and those who so freely rush in to add their endless prattle in the comments sections?

Of course, this is so much rhetoric. We know the answer. Such "clamour" as there has been has been muted. The chatterati would much rather indulge themselves in their diet of trivia, tat and theatre than get down to the hard, gritty brass tacks of who runs this country and whether they are doing a good job.

Thus, as we have so often observed on this blog, we – the collective – have only ourselves to blame. And blame there must be – uncomfortable though it might be. For myself, in reproducing the photograph above, I am drawing attention to what was for me a turning point when the event recorded happened, almost two years ago to the day.

One should not draw too much from one photograph but the picture of those three, posturing, grinning buffoons was the last straw. It demonstrated to me with utmost clarity why the Conservatives are not fit for government.

Our problem – and tragedy – is that neither is the "government" fit for government. That goes without saying. The children have indeed broken out of the playpen and taken over the nursery. We have, therefore, Hobson's choice between one set of incompetents and another.

However, we do not have to accept this choice. If we are still a democracy – and in any event – we have the tools to make our voices heard. It is about time that we used them, properly and to effect. The message is simple and direct, to which we alluded earlier. Do the job for which you are paid - or we will find people who can.

COMMENT THREAD

A major service outage

That was the message from AoL this morning, affecting the whole of the North of England. Back on-line now, but can't read any e-mails. A post is in preparation and will be up shortly.

Totally unaccountable

On March 24, 1989, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez, carrying more than 50 million gallons of North Slope crude oil, ran aground and ruptured in Alaska's Prince William Sound.

Approximately 11 million gallons of crude oil poured out of the ship in less than five hours. By August 1989, the oil had moved across nearly 10,000 square miles of water in the Sound and the Gulf of Alaska.

This was an ecological and financial disaster that cost the company $300 million in immediate compensation costs, and a $2 billion contribution to the clean-up, with a $2.5 billion law suit still pending.

Now, let us make a comparison. During the period of late September to mid-October 2008, the global banking system ran aground and ruptured in centres around the world, from New York to Iceland and London and beyond, spilling out trillions of dollars. World-wide, trillions of dollars of public money had to be spent to clean up the mess.

In the Exxon Valdex disaster, the events were raked over the coals, with innumerable inquiries, court hearings and the rest. The Captain, Joseph Jeffrey Hazelwood, was prosecuted, fined $50,000 and sentenced to 1,000 hours community service. Has never worked as a master since.

By contrast, in the Great 2008 Banking Disaster, the "tanker" has been hauled off the rocks, patched up and refilled with oil. The crew which drove the "ship" onto the rocks has been left in place and is now being allowed to have another go, with not so much as a slap on the wrist, much less an inquiry. Moreover, no one seems even to be calling for an inquiry.

If that parallel looks to be far-fetched, how else does one interpret Mervyn King's startling admission yesterday evening that, "Not since the beginning of the first world war has our banking system been so close to collapse."

Said our Mervyn, the events sparked by the collapse of US bank Lehman Brothers in September, culminating in the 37-billion-pound (64-billion-dollar, 47-billion-euro) banking bailout, were "extraordinary, almost unimaginable". Speaking to a meeting of business leaders in Leeds, he then went on to say that it was "difficult to exaggerate the severity and importance of those events".

Add to this, the comment of the editor of The Financial Times, Lionel Barber, which we recorded yesterday, when he talked of a "collective regulatory failure". His input is just one of many that speak to the same theme, a theme echoed by Professors Patrick Minford and Tim Congdon, which we picked up a week ago.

It is even one which has been acknowledged by the now embattled shadow chancellor who, at the end of last month complained that "Gordon Brown's regulatory mechanism has comprehensively failed". Discard the political rhetoric about Brown, and you have a "regulatory failure" in the frame.

Even David Cameron is singing the same tune, declaring that our "largest household debt of any major economy" was "not something we imported from America – it was down to bank lending and regulatory failure here at home".

Casting a wider net, a commentator in Australia is saying, "Government regulatory failure, not the greed of investors or speculators, is at the core of present financial problems." We even get the same refrain from Scotland with a commentator declaring, "Taxpayers' billions were being used to solve problems caused by banking avarice and regulatory failure."

To that list we can also add the multiple complaints yesterday in the US Congress about the "weaknesses in financial regulation" including, incidentally, a robust condemnation of the "mark to market" accounting system.

Finally, to cap it all, we have the chairman of Lloyds, Lord Levene, telling Jeff Randall that the regulators were to blame for crisis. He believed things had "fallen through the cracks", asking, "Did the regulators fully understand what they were looking at?" then adding, "Did things fall through the cracks... I think they have done."

Now go back to yesterday and Lord Turner's comments about the need to seek "fundamental improvements" to the Basel II framework for measuring capital.

Then pick up the comments from Mario Draghi, European Central Bank Governing Council member and Financial Stability Forum Chairman. He says "that even stronger revisions may be needed to the Basel II accord regarding the amount of capital needed to be set aside by banks."

Every which way you look at it, we have the equivalent of an Exxon Valdez of the financial regulatory system, with all roads leading to Basel. So why is it that no one in the UK seems to be calling for an inquiry?

The points we made two days ago are still valid, but the only development we have had so far is a call by Michael Howard for an inquiry into the reporting by the BBC's Robert Peston of the crisis. Greg Hands MP, though, wants a full-blown Serious Fraud Office investigation.

We have had Conservative Party Treasury spokesman Philip Hammond calling for a public inquiry, but only into the FSA's oversight of AIG Financial Products in Mayfair. But at least that is something. All we have had from the Liberal Democrats is a call from Chris Huhne for a "full investigation" into the George Osborne affair.

With that affair dominating the headlines - in what is possibly of some minor significance in the narrow domain of party politics, the bigger picture has been swamped.

From the perspective here, it seems the political establishment has lost the plot, retreating into a new infantilism while the important issues go unheeded. Perhaps though, this is just too big. At the top of the regulatory midden is that shadowy organisation, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, the apogee of the new system of world government.

But, if no one wants to take on this committee on, when even its own chairman admits to failures, then it would seem to confirm the very worst – that our new government is totally unaccountable. It is responsible to no one.

Rather than taking the responsibility of commanding a ship, clearly it is better to be an anonymous banker on an international committee making the rules if you mess up. That way, not a hair on your head is disturbed and you glide effortlessly on, safe in your anonymity as your monthly salary cheques continue to flow.

And there is not a single politician, journalist or commentator prepared to do a thing about it. Thus are we betrayed.

COMMENT THREAD

And another thing …

Before we hear any more drivel about the British media bravely attempting to "root out corruption" in its pursuit of Mr Mandelson, you might just recall that we have heard stories before about commissioners on luxury yachts, taking hospitality from rich men.

Does anyone remember, for instance, the little affair of Mr Barroso and Spiros Latsis, the Greek millionaire - and the role of the media? We do. We broke the story ourselves in April 2005 after details emerged from a question asked by Nigel Farage in the EU Parliament.

We followed it up here and here, only then to note that it was, "inevitable that British media attention would centre on" … er … "Mr Mandelson, even though the Barroso story raised far more serious implications." That "obsession" we noted, continued with "Mandy" articles in both The Sunday Times and The Scotsman.

As the details of the Barroso/Latsis tryst emerged, The Times wrote, on the ball as always, that Mandelson was "at the centre of a new row over sleaze last night after it emerged that he attached a free Caribbean holiday to an official trip just months after his political comeback as a European commissioner."

Despite the lack of MSM interest in the Latsis affair, we pursued the story, unravelling layer upon layer of interesting material, followed by Booker, compounded by additional detail as the story got murkier and murkier.

As we homed in on the details, did any of these wonderful blogs that are so interested in "corruption" link to us? Er …

Nevertheless, we continued our pursuit, alongside UKIP, while the Tory MEP group dropped out ... and our brave MSM continued to ignore the issue. But, with the details we had unearthed, UKIP got a motion of censure - supported by five Tory MEPs - which substantially raised the temperature of the affair.

Nevertheless, on the day, we reported:

According to the press officer for the Independent/Democracy Group, when he went down to the press office in the EU parliament with a sheaf of releases on the Latsis/Barroso story, so keen were the assembled hacks that he described it as "like walking into Trafalgar Square with an open packet of corn".

And the result? A search of Google this morning gives… nothing… ne rien… nada. However, the BBC's Today programme did a stonking story on Beckham's satin cummerbund.

We continued our coverage, with links only from a number of foreign blogs and some foreign media interest, while the brave, upright British media slumbered on. The few Tories who supported us got into trouble but we plodded on, ploughing our lonely furrow until the story petered out through lack of media interest.

A contact in Brussels tells me today that, the moment Mandelson got appointed, the MSM despatched dozens of hacks to Brussels, all with express instructions to "dig the dirt" on the former commissioner. He told me they had never seen so many British journalists in Brussels. Were they interested in what was going on Brussels? Nah. All they wanted was "dirt" – any dirt they could find, as long as it was about Mandelson.

I've said it before and, no doubt, I'll say it again. These people really are the dregs. And, of course, the "derivative" blogs just pile in and amplify the prattling.

On this site, are we really supposed to be impressed?

COMMENT THREAD