Madam Gyon

The Soul That Loves God Finds Him Everywhere
1
O thou, by long experience tried,
Near whom no grief can long abide;
My love! how full of sweet content
I pass my years of banishment!
2
All scenes alike engaging prove
To souls impressed with sacred love!
Where'er they dwell, they dwell in thee;
In heaven, in earth, or on the sea.
3
To me remains nor place nor time;
My country is in every clime;
I can be calm and free from care
On any shore, since God is there.
4
While place we seek, or place we shun,
The soul finds happiness in none;
But, with a God to guide our way,
'Tis equal joy to go or stay.
5
Could I be cast where thou art not,
That were indeed a dreadful lot;
But regions none remote I call,
Secure of finding God in all.
6
My country, Lord, art thou alone;
Nor other can I claim or own;
The point where all my wishes meet;
My law, my love, life's only sweet!
7
I hold by nothing here below;
Appoint my journey and I go;
Though pierced by scorn, oppressed by pride,
I feel thee good—feel nought beside.
8
No frowns of men can hurtful prove
To souls on fire with heavenly love;
Though men and devils both condemn,
No gloomy days arise from them.
9
Ah, then! to his embrace repair;
My soul, thou art no stranger there;
There love divine shall be thy guard,
And peace and safety thy reward.

The Middle East – why the talks (or any talks) will fail.

The Middle East – why the talks (or any talks) will fail.

Once again, the American are seeking to be the honest brokers in talks between the Arabs and the Israelis. There isn’t much optimism about, but every new administration in the U.S. has to try; not least for domestic political reasons. The most important reason is America’s dependence on Middle East oil. War in the area would now involve not just Israel’s immediate neighbours, but Iran would be drawn in. The oil flow would be at serious risk.

I can’t imagine that the expert advisors in the White House do not know the real situation in the Middle East, but they have to pretend that an agreement is possible, even though they know it is not. Years ago that well known, and very wise German Jew, Henry Kissinger wrote a long article in Newsweek (which I read). In it he explained his experience of the Arabs. His conclusion was that there are only two types of Arabs. One wants to attack and destroy Israel immediately. The other thinks they should wait until they are stronger and then attack and destroy the Israelis.

The Arab will Never make peace with the Jews. True they hate them, but more importantly they believe that Israel is their land – all of it. This is a result of the Muslim doctrine about land. Palestine was once occupied by Muslims, so it should always be that way. It is their solemn duty to God to regain God’s land for Islam. Thus their war cry has always been ‘We will drive their men into the sea and rape their women’. And they will if they get the chance. However, God is the one who really protects Israel.

In the Camp David talks with President Clinton, Arafat was suddenly offered everything he was asking for. He panicked, phoned home and came up with new and impossible demands which ended the talks. Israel called his bluff and he knew – as they knew – the Arabs would never agree to peace. Only the destruction of Israel will satisfy the Arabs.

Israel’s position is very simple. God gave them this land long ago and they will NEVER give it up, even if they have to defend it with nuclear weapons.

Tony Blair's secret plan.

The Plan

The plan should not have been complicated, except that the mind-boggling incompetence of Gordon is threatening to derail it. Tony Blair set about appeasing, bribing and empowering every minority he could think of. By this means you secure them as long term supporters and voters.

Labour has their long-standing traditional strongholds, just as the Tories have. To this you add the Gay community by giving them equal rights in every area of life, even ridiculous things such as adoption. Gay marriages, clergy etc.

Then you go very soft on immigration and asylum seekers, ensuring that the population of this country goes up by ten million in 12 years. Mainly natural Labour voters.

The Muslim community are appeased in every area possible. Mosques can be built anywhere. Apart from the hiccup of the Iraq war, he secured the long-term allegiance of the two million strong Islamic community.

The next big step is to devolve political powers to Scotland (which secured over 70 seats for Labour last time) Wales and Northern Ireland. Money by the Billion is poured into these regions with relatively small populations and they become natural Labour strongholds. I think he failed in Ireland.

Then you push and push for the EC to vastly expand. Only the UK among the large countries have unrestricted access for EC workers such as Poles. He even tried to bring in Turkey with its 80 million largely poor and uneducated population. This could still happen.

Then he makes it know that he will convert to Roman Catholicism when he leaves office, hoping to secure many Catholic votes. Also he hoped he could become President of Europe this way, but that failed.

You put all these appeased and bribed-for voters together with the traditional Labour heartlands and you have an eternal built-in Labour majority. Just to make sure, he commissions a boundary review that somehow comes up with the result that the Tories now have to get 8.1% more voted than Labour just to be equal in seats - bizarre.

If the Tories get enough seats to form the next government, it will be a political miracle.

Had I been born a Welshman

Had I been born a Welshman,
my mam would have called me Dai
For Wales I’d have played rugby
And at Twickenham scored a try.
I’d be in the Pontypool front row,
A half ton of blubber from head to toe

Had I been born a Welshman
My granddad would have been a miner.
I’m sure he would have known Lloyd George
And I would always have voted Labour.
Yes, I’d carry the torch for my valley
But vacation each year in Miami.

Of course I would speak such perfect Welsh
And pronounce those difficult long names
And I’d know the best way to cook leeks
And be glad we had Welsh language telly.
To preserve our language we must try,
Though I myself would always watch Sky.

The coal mines are all gone you see
And we’re not much good in a factory.
Only the grass for our sheep is now free
I think I have to become Tory
The evil EC with that crafty old Kinnock
Would have us in the Euro in a blink!

So keep a welcome in the valley
When I come home to Wales.
‘Cause I have a good job in Bromley,
And good pay from computer sales.
O yes I like to visit the Rhonda
But I’m glad I don’t have to live there.

The financial crisis, how did it happen?

The financial crisis – how did it happen?

I get irritated when I can’t understand what’s going on! So I read and listened and watched, even talked to a friend who is a banker. This is what happened – I think.

It began with the ‘Big Bang’ in 1986 when the Thatcher government deregulated the stock market. Fixed commission rates were abolished and the era of big bonuses arrived. Trading was no longer on the trading floor with loud young men waving their hands in the air, selling or buying stocks. The system was now Electronic, screen-based trading. It used the newly available powerful computers. This speeded up and expanded the whole system and made possible the disasters that were to follow.

This led to increased wealth and a ‘Boom’ that Gordon Brown proudly boasted would not again go ‘Bust’ – how wrong he was! This led to a steep and prolonged rise in the price of houses, both here and in America. There is an old financial adage that says ‘As safe as houses.’ Simply because, in living memory, the cost of houses have relentlessly risen.

Consequently, the holy grail of the banking world was a loan secured against a house – because houses always went up in value and you only loaned a percentage of the house’s value anyway. It was a safe loan – the bank or finance company couldn’t lose. If you hadn’t a house with equity in it, you couldn’t have a loan thank you very much!

The crisis began in America with as little as two thousand greedy managers and their subordinates, who approved mortgage loans. The normal system of carefully assessing if a person could pay the monthly mortgage payment and was the house worth the asking price, disappeared. Anyone, even if they had no hope of ever finding a job, could have a loan. It didn’t matter if they couldn’t pay because banks or financial institutions will bear the risk. The mortgage seller got a big fat bonus ( typical estate agent’s fee in America is an astonishing 6% of the value!) and there was no comeback if it all went south – as the Americans say.

Why? The guys at the banks were smart. They could sell the mortgage risk on to another bank. They in turn might sell it – or usually – a fraction of it on to another bank. These fractions of mortgages were sold in ‘bundles’. Sometimes hundreds or thousand of fractions of dodgy mortgages were flying round the world, carried on super-computers and hardly anyone understood it all. To make matters worse, the further away from the original lender the money travelled, the lower the priority it had on any repayment or foreclosure sale. The first lender had ‘First call’ on say the first ten percent. Someone else had ‘Second call’ on the next, say twenty percent and so on until the banks that had bits of the last fifty percent had no chance of getting anything back. But no one knew because the computers were too complicated, or those that did, didn’t care because they had just had a Christmas bonus of one million pounds.

The most important facts were:
• The seller and the buyer of a bundle received a fat bonus every time the bundle was moved.
• There was no risk because it could be sold on.
• It would all be fine eventually because everyone knew they were secured against houses – that always went up in value – didn’t they?

The value of houses everywhere had become over-inflated. A readjustment had to occur. The values went down. Banks here had been making loans up to six times a persons income – all to get the big bonuses. After all, there was no risk – they thought house prices would always go up.

Except they didn’t! There was no incentive or check on the reckless sellers of mortgages in America. All they cared about was their big bonuses. Eventually, there were trillions of dollars in ‘TOXIC LOANS’ swishing around the banking world in thousands of bundles. The inbuilt warning mechanisms in the super-computers’ programmes began to flash red as the situation neared meltdown levels. The worst culprit in the UK was Northern Rock. It was borrowing billions on very short-term contracts of typically three months, to finance long-term loans many times greater than its assets. Then someone noticed! Other banks refused to lend them any more money because they were insolvent. In steps the government bails out this small Mickey Mouse bank with tens of billions of taxpayers money, to save a nationwide run on the banks.

The worst in America was Lehman Brothers who amazingly had loaned out eighty dollars for every dollar it owned! The American government had more sense than ours and let it go bust. Now all the banks in the world turned the computers to looking at how much their competitors were in trouble and the news was bad, very bad. As a result they stopped the short-term loans to each other that the whole ‘house of cards’ depended on and the toxic bundles carousel came to a grinding halt.

Trillions of dollars of taxpayers money around the world were poured in to stop a worldwide collapse of the banking system and our grandchildren will still be paying it off when we are gone. The chief accountant to the British government was asked in a TV interview, ‘If I gave you a copy of the annual audited accounts of Lloyds TSB Bank, would you be able to understand them?’ The answer was a firm ‘No’, and this from the country’s most senior accountant!

The human cost has been appalling. Repossessed houses and millions more jobless. Our children will be less prosperous as a result. The lesson is that unfettered greed and powerful computers together are a TOXIC mix.