A bit more about RBS and HBOS. One thing that sticks out for me is that sense of two institutions with a bitter local rivalry, both with serious resources and ambitions, but perhaps not quite up to the standards they set for themselves, with an identity built on chippy bitterness. We’ve seen that somewhere before…
Read More Local rivalrySo I advised you not to read Iain Martin’s Making it Happen, but advised you to read Simon Carswell’s Anglo Republic. Reviews of books on bank failures seem to have become an occasional series, and at least it’s somewhat less depressing than Jimmy Savile, so here we go. Yes, yes, you should absolutely read Ian…
Read More Now here’s the bank disaster book you should read.It’s been a while. How about a TYR Pub! meetup? Update: OK, no point buggering about any further. Let’s say the 11th July. And let’s say 7.30pm at the Queen’s Hotel, Crouch End Broadway N8.
Read More TYR Pub!Sometimes you look around the Internet for just the right blog discussion and only then realise that it’s the one you will have to write.
Read More Thort.OK, it’s time for one of these. Books: I’ve recently read Mike Martin’s An Intimate War: An Oral History of the Helmand Conflict, Ian Fraser’s Shredded: Inside RBS, the Bank That Broke Britain, Agata Pyzik’s Poor Sexy East, and Phil Lapsley’s Exploding the Phone. I’ve also got the MOD Lessons Learned Compendium on Iraq hanging…
Read More Open newslist 6The Leeds post on Savile required subtlety; it dealt with things like culture and class that only work that way. So what about Broadmoor, the asylum where the Tories put the psychopath in charge? Well, Leeds was about the things nobody was willing to say. As we will shortly see, Broadmoor was about precisely the…
Read More Tories and thugs (#Savile warning)I have been reading the Leeds Teaching Hospitals report on Jimmy Savile. Obviously, it couldn’t really be any more grim, and you’ll have heard the latest shocking revelations via the mainstream media and Jamie Kenny. But what about really sick and perverted behaviour? Here’s some for you. A hugely important theme in the report is…
Read More Genuinely evilSteve Randy Waldman appears to have independently rediscovered the idea of a low-trust society and to have quantified a transition point.
Read More trust no one except perhaps interfluidityThere’s a bit more on the war of Coulson’s Clearance here, from Robert Peston, who I seem to remember attracted attention back in 2011 as being oddly pro-Murdoch. I know the answer to why Coulson was not given top level security vetting in 2010. What happened was that Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood had decided…
Read More heywoood, always up to no gooodHere’s an interesting story of a Russian military intelligence officer deployed into Ukraine, apparently under plausibly-deniable cover, whose communications were meant to hide in plain sight among the chaotic noise of the Internet. Specifically, he’s a gamer and re-enactor in private life and he tried to use the channels of this subculture. Unfortunately for him,…
Read More The problems of Puffin Party security