expert blog reviews

Friday 23 December 2011

OCCUPY CHRISTMAS AND THEN GET OUT...

















What a year!  Eurogedon and U.S. troops out of Iraq.  If that wasn't enough...well it was thanks...the discovery of a particle that travelled faster than the speed of light...maybe...the possibility that the Higgs Boson could actually be there...but neither is definitive yet.  I'm out here...the kids grown up...the wife well..the wife.  I'm past hope...but I keep hoping...what else is there to do?

Merry Christmas
Gray

Friday 16 December 2011

THE END FOR CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

















Just as a day of worthy labour brings peaceful sleep so a life well lived brings welcome death...Da Vinci..

Thursday 15 December 2011

MARKETS MAKE MISTAKES

















There was a gloating equity trader in London who expressed his delight that the latest set of employment stats showed a dramatic rise in the number of self employed.  What he didn't realise is that self employed people do not in the main save for their future, nor do they pay taxes at the same rates, nor do they create more employment as effectively as employees of large and medium, well organised and effective businesses.  Mexico and Brasil and Nigeria all have a very high percentage of self employed.  They are characteristic of underdeveloped, unsophisticated economies with large underclasses of disadvantaged people.  "The Markets" which are exacerbating sovereign and corporate debt problems by setting too stringent criteria for lending would be delighted with such an outcome as the rich can protect themselves with the force of the state and private collusion.  It is time to share the pain.  The state and corporate communities must come to understand that egalitarianism creates a more civilised environment in which to enjoy the benefits of prosperity.

Gray Dourman
www.magichelix.com  

Wednesday 14 December 2011

NATION STATES ARE CORRUPT











Nations states are as corrupt as collaborative alliances.  Corruption and fudging the rules is part and parcel of politics so we just have to challenge when we can and live with it when we can't.  So here is the way I see the emergence of collective human politics and the extinction of the nation state.

I hate to say it, but I have to agree with Sarkozy, the fraud and greed which caused this economic crisis was not overregulation but under-regulation and regulation constrained by national borders.  Had Greece been audited by functioning Euro bureaucracy it never would have got into the Euro in the first place.  It was audited and it balance sheets submitted by a London/NewYork alliance of private interest in the name of Goldman Sachs and KPMG supported by Moodys the very institutions our Mr. Cameron is seeking to protect.  Doesn't he smell just as bad as lying Eurocrats.

1. Globalisation and the interconnection of economies and communications stimulates homogenisation of rules and transactions.  Look at how tax avoidance regimes have been identified and pressured over the past two years.  Within a decade tax avoidance facilitated by national borders with have all but eliminated.

2. At the same time, while macro economy societies emerge diversified micro social societies emerge through communications and specific groupings of interests supported by social networking facilitated through technology.

The outcome: more economic union and more cultural diversity.

We were warned at the beginning of this decade that globalisation would have a price, but it would be a price worth paying.  I am hurting hard through this mess but I believe the hurt will sort itself and the world will emerge more unified and better off as per the distribution of wealth and the quality of life and more diversified where language, music, art and independence of thought are encouraged.  After that we can get on with understanding and putting the Higgs Boson to work.

Gray Dourman
www.magichelix.com

Tuesday 13 December 2011

THE JUST BEFORE CHRISTMAS BLUES...















Waiting for Santa...wanting nothing...no future...no past...even life doesn't last...all fits and starts...hot sand...arranging the parts for every member of the band...and yet the angels wait...atop the trees...in the alcoves...will I be home in time...will those left behind still be mine...

Happy Holidays..
Gray Dourman
www.magichelix.com

Friday 9 December 2011

DAVID CAMERON PUSHES US CLOSE TO EUROGEDON

















Our Prime Minister has caved in to backbenchers and those nostalgic Britons who long
to be a great power again and don't mind getting there by driving working people into poverty. William Hague displays his own
particular delirium by suggesting that we can replace Europe as an export market by competing in places like Latin America. Yeah
right, lets compete with the working conditions and human rights of China and Korea while we're at it. It is an illusion to think
that we can compete with other economies without reducing our living standards and the people it will hurt most are those who do not
have the deep pockets of the 'Upper Middle Class'. Sure David Cameron had the balls to stand up for Financial Services...but I don't
think Financial Services has covered itself with glory...or deserves to be stood up for...and if you want to really know what's up in
Financial Services...watch Charles Ferguson's Academy Award winning 'Inside Job' on your BBC Storyville...you've got 5 days left.

In the mean time enjoy the illusion that David is really Winston Churchill and WWII was our finest hour. The sooner we understand
that we are Europeans...the better...



Gray Dourman

www.magichelix.com

Wednesday 7 December 2011

HISTORIC FICTION...HUMAN FACT







Historical fiction can informative, educational and often entertaining but although the core human characteristics have remained largely unchanged over the evolution of mankind and literature, the social context within which those characteristics are expressed has changed dramatically. Readers tell me they read historical fiction in order to be transported to another time and another place among other motivations such as wanting to escape their current time and place. The trick to a really successful historical novel is to create the past but to lace it with contemporary meaning. Murder has been with us from the beginning but the social reaction to murder has transformed from culture to culture, from generation to generation. To create a dialogue with the reader focussing on the varied reactions of individuals and cultures to murder in the 18th Century and by implication contrasting with murder in his or her current context, is not only challenging for the author but also rewarding when the alchemy is right and the trick succeeds.


http://www.amazon.com/A-CASE-IN-POINT-ebook/dp/B006BYDLYG/ref=sr_1_5?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1322056364&sr=1-5

Friday 2 December 2011

OCCUPY LITTLE BRITAIN....THE RISE OF THE RIGHT



















The smugness and arrogance of privilege as expressed by the likes of Cameron, Osborne and Clarkson, not to mention Murdoch, Hague, Duncan-Smith and Green when sympathy and excuses are muttered over the fall of fat cats like Fox who fed his friends from the coffers of the land, the same 'Little Britons' who spread the scurrilous idea that we face economic crisis because working people in Britain want too much and don't work hard enough, is a blight on democracy.  The collective delusion that austerity ever fixed anything is ridiculous.  Show me that  hunter gatherers survived when they stopped hunting and hunkered down in their caves to save energy in the vain hope that available game would wander by when the weather got better.  Anthropology shows that the successful strategy is some hunkering and some seeking.  The conservative ideology is wedded to austerity because they know their pockets are deeper than those of working people and they can starve those workers back into slavery.   Working people tossed monarchy out of America and France.  Working people fought Germany and Japan.  Working people will prevail if they remember that they created the wealth and  take democratic steps, which includes free assembly and the right to strike, to protect the right to a say on how it is spent.

Gray Dourman
www.magichelix.com  

Thursday 1 December 2011

OCCUPY JEREMY CLARKSON' S BRAIN


















And occupy Jeremy Clarkson's mouth as well...how the BBC has not fired this jackass I cannot fathom...if a Muslim said all TV presenters should be taken out and shot they'd be in jail...but Jeremy, David Cameron's neighbour and best friend is not alone among top earners in Little Britain...which has deflecting the economic debate away from greedy, thieving bankers and onto profligate, democratic governments...and somehow they are now suggesting that working people deserve to have a 10% fall in real income and a 60% loss in savings because they didn't work hard enough.  Can this be right?

Gray Dourman
www.magichelix.com

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