There was an interesting leader in the Times this morning suggesting that Russian oligarchs need to raise $120 billion to enable them to meet margin calls. Putin, in all but name president of Russia, The Times suggests, is waiting in the wings to offer aid and, thereby, bring back under state control assets sold off in the early days of Russian capitalism.
Interesting…. and I haven’t seen quite as many Russians wandering about as usual. Mind you, it used to be easy to recognise them… but since they have given up dressing in the dark it has become more difficult to spot them.
It is the old story… you wait for a story about an oligarch and then they come in in threes…. George Osborne is in the news. The Times ran the headline “The Tories, the oligarch and a £50,000 question.”
Guido Fawkes writes: “Mandelson’s ability to get Nathan Rothschild, a Tory donor, to counter-attack Osborne over the “pouring poison” line is widely seen as a tribute to his powers of persuasion.”
Osborne at Bay… The Guardian – we shall see what happens when The Times reports tomorrow?
An interesting post from The Spy Blog…. “Home Secretary Jacqui Smith – EU G6 plus USA Ministers discussing “remote searches of computer hard drives.”
Spyblogs states: “This United Kingdom based blog attempts to draw public attention to, and comments on, some of the current trends in ever cheaper and more widespread surveillance technology being deployed to satisfy the rapacious demand by state and corporate bureaucracies and criminals for your private details, and the technological ignorance of our politicians and civil servants who frame our legal systems.”
You may also be interested in Spy Blog’s Freedom of Information website – interesting reading.
I have just read Mervyn King’s assessment for Britain as we head into recession. He talks of a Long March which, inevitably, conjured up in my febrile mind at least, images of the The Great Protector leading us…. I may have overdone the juice for a Tuesday night. The Times reports: “Mervyn King admitted for the first time that “it now seems likely that the economy is entering a recession”. He steeled struggling families and firms for a protracted stretch of tough times.
“We now face a long, slow haul to restore lending to the real economy, and hence growth of our economy, to more normal conditions,” he said.
He warned that a harsh squeeze on take-home pay, soaring living costs, and scarce access to loans for consumers, “poses the risk of a sharp and prolonged slowdown…”
Just a quick post for now….. curiously I am reading about human rights abuses in the UK…. not very pleasant reading….
I must admit it came as a surprise to see Rothschild gunning for the Tories. Mind you, it seems he didn’t come out into the open because of any kind of ethical dilemma but because he was annoyed that Osborne had betrayed Rothschild’s privacy!
Thanks for the link to the FoI site though I have to say that it’s the parent Spy Blog that’s got me hooked now … but then you know that the “surveillance society” is one of my obsessions!
[…] 22 10 2008 There was an interesting leader in the Times this morning suggesting that Russian oligarchs need to raise $120 billion to enable them to meet margin calls. Putin, in all but name president of Russia, The Times suggests, is waiting in the wings to offer aid and, thereby, bring back under state control assets sold off in the early days of Russian capitalism. Charon reports…. […]