We need a bailout

 Hi All, 

I was eying up the last bourbon biscuit, when our host, the reason for all of us being here, finally arrived fashionably half an hour late. It was 6 pm, 25th February 2121. We were in the Treasury building in the capital city of Birmingham. We were in a nondescript room that could have been in any company office, a set of seats and desks like they have at school. There were only 8 of us and my e-me, Clara, had identified them all as senior executives of some of the largest dynastic, that is those who still have family members running them,  companies of Earth.  Our host was the Treasury Secretary Herbert Ricardo. An academic by trade, who had also run one of the most successful Hedge Funds, until President F'szoorg had nominated him to become the 34th Treasury Secretary earlier this year. Bald and bearded he looked more like the sort who would attend a left wing rally than a right wing audience of plutocrats.

Ricardo moved to the front desk but surprisingly didn't have any other officials with him. 'Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you all for coming at such short notice and our official apologises for any inconvenience caused to you'.  

'As Treasury Secretary I've called this meeting because your government needs your help. You may have noticed the current market situation'  (the stock markets of the world had plummeted in the past couple of days with no apparent reason, but blue chip stocks, including our own , had been badly hit). 'This is because the Church of England has been liquidating its portfolio of blue chip stocks, in an effort to remain solvent. Unfortunately for them, they are about to run out of cash in a matter of days. As you know we are under the constitution  forbidden to financially aid a religious organisation, even one which threatens an economic disaster .

Everyone seemed nonplussed about this, myself included. For the better part of 30 years, the Church of England's General Synod had repeatedly  voted to boycott our company, but Ricardo continued :

 'If the inevitable bankruptcy happens, it will wipe out the capital ratio of its banker, the Royal Bank of England. This in turn will force this bank into calling in loans, selling its liquid assets, such as shares and bonds. We project that in return the rest of the market will begin pulling its money out of Royal Bank and it will be cut off from interbank lending by Friday. Next Monday it is likely to go into Federal receivership. Whilst we have our deposit cover, it only extends to £25million and will cover the retail depositors,  it won't help banks who deposit to each other those kind of figures per minute. Needless to say this will cause further bank runs and market sell off. Many banks will go under and a large recession, depending on how much the Reserve Bank and the government respond, but however much we do will leave us and therefore taxpayers hugely in debt'. 

This did cause a little bit of a stir as the Royal Bank was the no 4 bank in the world. 'We can hopefully avoid this situation with your help. We - the government- ask you to 

1) Find a way to keep the Church of England afloat, we will provide a full file on what you're dealing with and they are sending a team so you can ask them any concerns 

2) The Royal Bank needs to be resolved. Whether that you bail it out, buy it or split it up between you, but we can't have it festering like a zombie bank.

And thirdly, as a gesture of good will toward you all, I am authorised to tell you that the President has issued an executive order, authorising all of your companies a current account at the Bank of Earth. You can not only deposit money at the central bank, but also borrow from her secured and unsecured borrowing, credit and bond facilities to the short to long term, at at sub 2% rate'. 

Ricardo finished 'any questions?'

Frankly I think everyone was too stunned and trying to take all of this information in, as the Presidents EO can through on their solar web lenses. I couldn't help myself and stood up first. 

'I've got to say this, um, Mr Secretary. Ellie Hoo-Good Elharar, Executive from the Elharar -Horowitz Company Plc. Our problem is that their Church's General Synod has been boycotting our company for 30 years. Even though it continues to invest in sex shops and virtual porn sites, it won't deal with us, refuses to let us develop our portal network or our energy portal  scoops, on the planets that they have owned since then,  which we can only infer is some kind of anti-Semitic attack on one of the world's successful Jewish firms . In fact I believe of the 193 companies boycotted by their so called 'ethics committee' all of them are owned by Israelis or Jews. Because of their boycotts they bring misery to the people who emigrated to their planets as they are stuck in a technological time warp of the late 1960s. It's funny though they do lease portals for terraforming, but in a way that looks like they're not.  No wonder they're going bankrupt , with half of their colonies unable to transport goods, have cheap energy or printed food if the crops fail. But that's their decision. In those circumstances I am not sure how we can help you in bailing out an institution which doesn't want anything to do with us'. 

'Thank you for that Ellie, In fact I'm glad you raised this issue, as this morning the President issued Executive order 203, which has reversed their boycott resolution, whether they like it or not. But I think that your companies involvement in this affair, is crucial'.

I was considering his reply. Think it's business as dad said over and over. Overwhelmingly I thought the consideration must be getting access to the Central Bank's credit. Unlimited near free money, as much as we want and need, is too much of a strategic gain and I would have to set that against my now somewhat mollified feelings. Then I was pinged over the President's EO 203. They've been thinking this through I thought. 

'Okay, so we're in. Where do I sign to get our account and what happens next?' I asked. 

The others nodded their assent as well, probably for the same reasons as me. 

'Time is ticking, This room is available to you all night, till we get this sorted, I will get you the files you need  to-'

'I'm not staying in this room all evening!' Shouted one of the delegates. Clara noted her as being from Patel & Thomas Conglomerate. 

Before anyone could reply I blurted 'Well you can all stay at mine then!'

'Well that would be appreciated' said the woman. 

Shabbat Shalom!

 Hi All, 

Shabbat Shalom! 

Open thread and don't forget to comment on my sci- fi writings that I've just published. The next instalment will hopefully be published on Saturday evening.  

Here are the cast of characters 

Cast

Politicians

Farlo Yisrael  F’zsorg Zulu ( First Sszoorg President. Name can be Anglicised as Philip Israel Fogg-Zulu), 25^th President of the United Union of Earth States (Right Party- South Africa)

Henry Herbert Ricardo 34^th Treasury Secretary (Right Party- UK)

Solomon kaShakazulu  His Majesty, King of the Zulus and Aston Hall(Primary residence of the President)  Chief of Staff  (Right Party-South Africa)

Mark Shalhoub , Parliamentarian , Speaker of The House of Commons (Right Party- Lebanon)

Gerhard Mohammed , Parliamentarian,  Minority Leader of the House of Commons (Left Party, Germany)

Helena Georgia Wells and Rifton  (Co-joined human and Onconvar ) Vice President of the United Union of Earth States and Dean of the Senate (Right Party- New Grenada)

Sir Gordon Godfrey Senate Majority Leader (Right Party- St Lucia)

Emma Dumas Senate Minority Leader (Left Party- France)

Noriyuki Takahashi, Senator, Chairman of the Senate Treasury Committee (Right Party- Japan)

Patrick Murphy, Senator, Ranking Member, Senate Treasury Committee (Left Party- Ireland)

Paul Forest, Supreme Governor of the Bank of Earth, Earth’s Central/Reserve Bank

 

Anglicans

The Most Reverend Christine Humphrey, 115^th Archbishop of Canterbury

Rev Gary Smith, Chaplain to the Archbishop Charismatic

The Very Rev Mikey Chatty, Dean of Oxford Cathedral . Liberal Catholic

The Right Rev Karen Smitch, 4^th Bishop of Venus. Witter sphere celebrity. Ultra -Liberal Anglican , transgender lesbian android and campaigner for LGBTQ Robot, hologram and Android rights.

The Venerable James Blackwell, Vicar General of Canterbury. Anglo-Catholic.

The Right Rev Timothy Buckerim, Bishop of Merica. Conservative Evangelical.

 

Businesses

David Elharar Co founder of Elharar -Horowitz Company, Earth’s largest conglomerate. Joint richest man, aged 170.

Jacob Horowitz Co founder of Elharar -Horowitz Company, Earth’s largest conglomerate. Joint richest man, aged 177.

Eleanor Hoo-Good Elharar, David’s acknowledged  illegitimate and youngest daughter, age 36. Chief Executive of the E-H Colonial and Interstellar Property Development Trust, a subsidiary of the EHC.

Marie Cortez ,  Eleanor’s bodyguard and security chief

The Terraforming of Welby's Reach

 Hi All,

Star system 112.55/66GT/1 was discovered by a passing Star Ship  in the autumn of  2089 and bought from the Star Ship’s owners by a Church of England led consortium of Anglican interests,  incorporated as ‘COE 56 Property Development Trust Ltd’ in 2090 for £535 billion (£214 billion for the Starship Company who had the development rights and survey , £214 billion for the Isle of Man, where the ship’s ‘home address’ was registered and who therefore had the Property Freehold rights  and £107 billion to the Federal government who-because the Star ship was an Earth registered ship  had the  automatic  sovereignty rights, which were charged as a form of stamp duty). The company sold off the gas giant for £420 billion to the Far Texas Energy Company Inc ,one of the top ten Mega Conglomerates which specialises in gas giant mining. The Far Texas Confederacy consists of 560 of said planets, which they called ‘Lionheart’. While usually there would be competition with the Jupiter Communion, because the primary shareholders were religious in nature the philosophical and religious differences between any of the old religions of Earth and the Jovians is presently insurmountable. The other competition, Nibiru, said they ‘didn’t believe the numbers’, in that they believed the budget allocated was far too small for a decent return.

The next task for the new company was to terraform the planet, which  they named ‘Welby’s Reach’, it was twice the size of Earth, had two small moons called Pole and Lanfranc, but with no magnetic field and little atmosphere, the planet was divided into old shield volcanoes, large canyons and plateaus, dozens of craters the size of Rhode Island, as well as extremely flat and smooth lowlands. The work progressed quickly. First a portal was dropped into the sun and another opened at Welby’s Core: the resulting intense flush of the Sun’s plasma being ejected into a dense space melted the outer core and heated the inner, kickstarting the planetary magnetic field. This in turn helping to warm the planet up by volcanic activity and the melting of the polar dry ice at the polar levels( i.e. carbon dioxide). Next hydrogen was pumped into the atmosphere, from the gas giant via portal along with 22, 2 mile long near pure nickel asteroids and meteoroids .

The hydrogen and the carbon dioxide, heated up with a blast of solar plasma and with nickel as the catalyst, under the Sabatier reaction produced water and methane, thus warming the planet even further and producing rain on the planet. The introduction of Lime, reduced the acidity of this water to acceptable levels, 800 ice bergs the size of Wales were dropped through portals from the ice caps of the Ocean planet Mu, into the various craters created numerous freshwater lakes and seas, as well as rivers: the largest of which was twice the size of the Nile back on Earth. The  flat plains were flooded and became seas and oceans, although volcanic activity will in time create many new islands. Specially modified coral was dropped into the waters and moss onto the lands, acting as a carbon sink, before a variety of genetically modified evergreens were planted. Next came the introduction of life into the sea. All in all this left the planet with 60% land and 40% water, of the land about 300 billion acres were set aside for development and the remaining 150 billion acres for ordinary trees and wildlife parks, which were the next thing to be introduced, before people began to arrive, in this case civil engineers, builders and general contractors.

Unfortunately for the development company, the Nibiru turned out to be better financial analysts than the Church of England as they’d burned through all the initial equity and credit facilities. Something which was manageable as a one off. Unfortunately this was happening across the entire church portfolio and the Church of England Plc (Inc either 597 or 1556 AD), a financial crisis was brewing that could not only bankrupt the Church of England, but Earth itself... 

The Prologue

 Hi All, 

I have been busy this week typing up a short story to novella . I shall give you guys a peak of this below: 

It is the early 2120s and humanity is exploring and colonising our own Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxy. Under one Federal government since 1963, a year after the world war three,  Earth and her territories called The United Union of Earther States  are the major polity of Earther humanity (there’s also Lunar humanity  and Jovian humanity) along with our dino-avian cousins the Szoorg share in what, on Earth at least,  has mostly  become one giant middle class estate. Transport is dominated by the largest conglomerate of Earth , the Elharar -Horowitz Company and their creation of Quantum Entanglement Fields , which create portals to travel to and from the Earth, Solar System and beyond.

Yours or the states?

 Hi All,

One of the key dividing lines between conservatives and socialists is that of property and money. To the socialist property and money should be owned outright by the state, as they are the most visible part of wealth and of course the most easily taken. Socialists don't like individual wealth, they believe it shouldn't exist, rather that it should be part of a collective pot which the state should administer for everyone else's benefit or good. Conservatives and Liberals have a different view in that property and money, legitimately bought and earned, is the individuals right to possess and use or spend as they see fit. Of course there would be taxes to pay, but after those have been paid and hopefully the tax would be a low as possible, then any surplus is for the individual and not collective pot. 

This difference can be illustrated in the news this week that Keir Starmer the Labour Party leader isn't happy that Brits have saved £125 billion extra cash during the pandemic. The bank of England and the government are crossing their fingers people will go and spend this after lockdown. However Sir Keir doesn't agree- the state should spend that money for people and projects the labour party approves of. Rather than outright seize the money, which would be politically folly, his scheme is to set up 'recovery bonds' which would then be spent. In other words you'd get an IOU with interest. 

The practical problem with this is that we already have government bonds - called Gilts - which are currently being dished out to fund the £400 billion deficit this year , with £200 billion of that being bought by the Bank of England, which has for the past decade bought over £600 billion of debt. Therefore if you want to give the government your money and earn interest you can do so already. Ah, but the thing is that government debt at present yields a very poor interest rate, which is true because of the point above- the Bank of England's 'money printing' has deliberately keep yields on the debt low. So presumably Sir Keir is aware he'd have to offer a higher rate to get at that £125 billion? If so isn't it a pointless waste of time if you as a government  can borrow cheaply at your normal source? 

They haven't thought this through. Well maybe they have and it's an automatic socialist reflex action following on from the thought that any property or money that isn't nailed to the floor should automatically belong to the state to use. 

The Progressive Alliance is nonsense

Hi All,

There's been a flurry of opinion pieces and editorial in the Guardian about how two party politics is bad, how compromise should be the order of the day and how the left need to organise a progressive alliance. 

Hmmm? Wasn't this the same newspaper that spent 5 years attacking Brexit and doing everything they could to stop it, by cheerleading for the EU? There wasn't much compromise then and actually not much compromise when it comes to being within the left in the latest split over transgender rights and feminists of the certain age. 

In any case a progressive alliance  i.e. Labour plus everyone except Farage and the DUP,  assumes that the world is divided into Conservative and non Conservative. It is also indicative of a London mentality. 

 However this is somewhat misleading because as we know a centralist party like the liberal democrats was happy enough to put the Conservatives into power way back in 2015.  The other part of this progressive alliance is the Greens. Who have 1 MP and not much votes. The last part of a progressive alliance would be the Welsh and Scottish Nationalists. Note they aren't leftist, but Nationalists. That is whether or not they have left wing mantras on social or economic policy, which is often more populist than leftist (e.g. tuition fees I often think are free so they can charge the English the full rate) ,  their overriding objective is to split Wales and Scotland from the UK and set up as Republics. They aren't interested in governing for the whole country, but just their little bit of it. The idea that you could include them in a progressive alliance is simply not practical, Okay so the SNP might bring itself to back legislation that sends the UK off onto a 'progressive' way, but at the same time it isn't going to work as they'd be hitting the exit door as soon as they could and thus collapsing any progressive government in the process. I can only conclude that Labour is the only serious choice for anyone how has left wing or progressive ideals. 

The twin of a progressive alliance is the grand idea of proportional representation. This is liked by the liberal democrats  because they believe that it would mean perpetual left wing government, on the assumption that the liberal democrats would always side with labour. In fact history has shown otherwise - not just for the lib dems- but also that PR would not mean that existing parties would stay together and  or that the vote share would remain the same. You'd probably have a dozen labour parties and a dozen conservative parties .Added to that you'd probably have celebrity or one man band parties springing up all over the place and not just Farage , who'd probably end up as kingmaker : pace Israel the home of PR in which even the largest party gets about 20 out of 120 on a good election and you literally do get one man band parties springing up at one election, winning seats and then loosing them all at the next. Alternatively look at Italy, which has had PR and a mix of FPTP and PR. How many governments and coalitions has it had each year and how many 'technocratic' governments? PR seems democratic, but maybe not so much.

Loser's consent and hypocrisy

 Hi All,

We've been hearing a lot about this concept ever since the 'storming' or 'attempted coup' on the US Congress. The concept of loser's consent is that in democracies the winning side either continues or takes over from another side. That 'other' gracefully hands over the reigns of power to the other and is accepted as the legitimate government. The cycle continues with every election. In America there is a couple of months of transition and co-operation, but in Britain the transfer of power usually happens by mid morning the day after the election and according to the Salisbury convention if the legislation proposed by the government was in the winning party's manifesto, the House of Lords does not veto or delay these bills before the House. 

The left , however, have criticised Trump and his supporters not just for the Capitol Hill debacle, but also because of the refusal of these types to acknowledge that Trump lost and that somehow the election was stolen from him- despite repeated court cases, often overseen by Republican judges and no real evidence enough to prove the voter fraud alleged. So the left feel that in refusal to admit defeat, Trump deliberately de-legitimised the current conventions and norms of  losers consent.

This is a fair point. However the far liberal -left in America have not exactly been any less charitable to the right when it comes to taking over power and are basically being hypocritical here. 

Here are the antics of the left in the House way back in 2001, when it was Bush vs Gore. 

And here is the antics when Trump was being elected : 

(note : the Congressman who objects is the same chap who led the recent Trump impeachment trial. Strange. It's not like they wanted to get rid of Trump from day 1?).

You will note from both clips that the mainstream Democrats as represented by Gore and Biden did acknowledge loser's consent, but it was the increasingly vocal and now dominant strain of the liberal left Democrats who didn't. 

As for Britain and loser's consent, we see here an even greater hypocrisy on behalf of the far liberal- left. We need look no further than the Brexit referendum held in 2016 and five years later we are finally out of the EU. But in those five years we witnessed a near bloodless coup, by those trying to thwart Brexit. It wasn't just opposition, but actually the road blocking and wrecking that went beyond loser's consent. In fact it was worse than that, because the left tried to say the vote wasn't legitimate and that it was all of a conspiracy somehow master minded by Putin. Or that it was a referendum in which the British people were too 'stupid' to understand what they were doing, that it was just a glorified opinion poll or that only 35% of people actually voted for it. 

In fact there are people still whinging on about this even now, although I think the election win in 2019 was decisive enough to convince remainers that it was 'over'. That and the recent vaccine debacle, has left a solid minority core of fanatics who can't stand any criticism of the EU (It was great reading the comments in the guardian wherein some of the most fiercest anti- brexiters got attacked by even more loopy remainers for pointing out the obvious).

Laters

 Hi All,

This week hasn't been a good one for posting. Hopefully next week will be. Until then I shall let you all continue chatting away as you do. 

Shabbat Shalom 

Shabbat Shalom

 Hi All,

Shabbat Shalom and open thread as usual!

Pints in the Sky

Hi All,

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth...he also made the stars" (Genesis 1)

"Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array " (Genesis 2, 1)

Nothing could be more true of the above verses in Torah, that what we are discovering about our universe; many 'fixed' suppositions about what can and cannot exist in space and what should and should not be there are all being turned on its head, which is why I can never get why atheists claim 'science' as their religion, but then I never really get why, on the other extreme, some so -called Haredi Orthodox dislike science so much either, given that we are studying the work of He Who made heaven and earth (Psalm 134).


But that's a story for another day. Over the years, scientists have discovered planets made of diamonds, planets called 'hot Jupiters' orbiting so close to the sun, they are like massive steel factories and in our own solar system, Titan is a moon of natural gas lakes liquid hydrocarbons and frozen methane, with more barrel of oil equivalents that the whole earth. Neptune, it is believed contains diamonds that are as big as icebergs and float in a liquid ocean of hydrogen.


But nothing could be more cool than the fact that, in what are called molecular clouds, there are billions and billions of pints of alcohol. True most of it is undrinkable, being methanol, Ethylene glycol (uses include anti-freeze),Vinyl alcohol (used in the chemical industries), but there is a fraction which is ethanol ,that is drinking and 'fuel' alcohol. But a fraction in a gas cloud, some of which are 300 billion miles across, still means that there are about 400 billions of drinkable, but probably frozen, booze as a conservative estimate, from one cloud, which overall contains ten billion, billion pints of alcohol (!). I look forward to the day when we go to the stars and touch this for ourselves, which, one day I am confident that we will.