Diana Watch

Well this is fun! A new game has been invented recently; it’s called “Bank Dominos”. The usual game of lining up dominos on their ends and then knocking them over is reasonably linear and therefore predictable, Bank Dominos, however is a little more abstract. One can fall over in America, say the Washington Mutual, and then one over here, I give you the Bradford and Bingley. Who knows when and where the next one will fall? International financed based fun anyone? The U.S. still hasn’t decided on its $700 billion bail out yet. Just to give some context to the size of this some of money, the war in Iraq has so far cost the U.S. tax payer $600 billion; this is an incredible amount of money. It has been an expensive 8 years for America from the party that offers you low taxes and smaller government with less interference, you know how to spend your money but not as well as President Bush does. The odd thing is that Republicans are against the bail out and are the ones holding it up, defying still President Bush, whilst the Democrats are sort of with him. Is anyone else slightly scared? You can see why they are arguing over this, treasury secretary Henry Paulson has inserted this little doozy into the proposed act, section 8 of the Paulson financial rescue plan states: "Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency." If approved as originally proposed, the plan would grant the Secretary of the Treasury unprecedented powers, proofing his or her actions against congressional or judicial review. $700 million and he doesn’t want anyone to ask him how he spent it, someone has been learning from the Dick Cheny school of politics.

Back in Britain we have had people lining up to criticise Bankers and their dealings but, as two of the loudest voices came from the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York Dr John Sentamu, let he who is without sin cast the first stone as it turned out the both the Anglican church and the Roman Catholic church have money in some of the massive hedge funds that have recently been short selling, oh dear. I believe last week I asked if anyone knew what hedge funds actually are (and soon, where, tee hee) but no one has come forward; surely one of you must know. Oh well Wikipedia it is then. Also, another reference to last weeks when I commented on David Cameron saying supportive things about bankers and today’s Observer was kind enough to report why this might be. It turns out that the Conservatives get massive donations from hedge fund managers. It seems that, despite the fact that we don’t know what they do, they make huge amounts of money and then give some of it to the Conservative party. If you give enough you get to be a member of a club called the Leaders Group and one of the perks, well I wouldn’t call it a perk but some might, are dinners at which David may appear, not in a puff of smoke I assume, I think he still uses a door like you and me, and chat. I assume that this is more likely at the dinners that take place at his house or is he sat upstairs in his bedroom like I used to be when my parents had friends round? Surely this is money for access and potential influence and that can’t be right. A nice man called Michael Hintze of CQS has given £662,500 and his company has shorted shares in Bradford and Bingley whilst two other men who run the investment firm Lansdowne, Paul Ruddock and David Craigen, who have given £210,000 and £50,000 respectively, were exposed last week as shorting shares in HBOS. So these are the people behind the Tory party, nothing has really changed.

Some awards,

The Award for Saving Me from Hollyoaks,

This goes to the returning Strictly Come Dancing, It Takes Two. Thank you so much to the BBC for putting this on at the same time as Hollyoaks as significant other would rather watch the lovely Claudia Wickleman than the worst program ever made. It is so bad that discovering that your significant other watches it is enough to make you reconsider the relationship.


The Award for Most Fun New Thing in Significant Others Life,

This goes to her new car, which is fantastic. It’s a Fiat 500 and it talks. Oh yes, talks. The car can respond to voice commands for dialling the phone, it’s great.



The Award for Most Fun I’ve had this Week,

This goes to the e-mail correspondence I had at the beginning of the week with a lady who has a fantastically right wing blog on Myspace. I found it on the most read bit and had a look and it was scary so I thought I would respond to one or two of her points, this lead to e-mails buzzing back and forth across the Atlantic and much fun was had, well by me anyway; I don’t think she was that impressed. By the way I think I won the discussion because she stopped replying first, I believe that’s how it works.

Have a fun week, I’m off to see Will Self tomorrow and that should be all sorts of fun.