BBC News Glamorizes Terrorism

Yesterday's attack on an off duty soldier in the London suburb of Woolwich is a truly shocking event.  The two deranged men hacked the man to death in broad daylight and then stood around proclaiming "god is great" and other medieval nonsense until the police arrived to deal with them. The press have been quick to tell us that this murder has all the hallmarks if an al-Qaida inspired attack, the terror organisation has apparently migrated to low tech "lone wolf" operations to reduce the chances of being caught by the security services.  The two assailants remained on the scene until armed police eventually arrived up to 20 minutes later, how long does it take to respond to a terrorist incident in central London?  Surely not 20 minutes!!  Scotland Yard's police commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, said officers from the counter-terrorist unit were leading the investigation into the "shocking and horrific" incident.  "We have launched a murder investigation, being led by the counter-terrorism command. Two men have been arrested in connection with that murder." There is a simple and chilling message that this sick crime is trying to communicate to other terror-curious Muslims - "anyone can be a terrorist now".  Given the scale of latent anger that exists within our Muslim communities and the lack of an alternative positive narrative for disaffected young Muslim men we should be concerned.  We should be concerned that inside our boarders we now have a pan-religion anger management problem that will certainly spill more innocent blood.  Solving the global problem of coexistence between our modern society and unreconstructed fundamentalist with Dark Age belief systems is going to be a long term project and the UK is on the front line.  Clearly the worst aspect of this incident is the violent death of an innocent man and the loss inflicted on his family and friends.  Insults has been added to this tragedy through the appalling coverage of this horror event by all the news media and particularly the BBC.  To have to watch the BBC news and Newsnight last night, where they gave these loony religious zealots airtime was one of the worst editorial decision in the BBC's recent history and that is saying something.  To broadcast the murderer, with blood all over his hands and the body lying in full view, was a gift to terrorism and a gross affront to the victim and all right minded viewers.

Back to boring for bankers and their bonuses

George Osborne has lost his campaign to stop the EU cap on bankers’ bonuses.  An overwhelming majority of EU states backed a 1:1 ratio of salary-to-bonus, which shareholders can choose to raise to 2:1. This falls well short of their expectations.  There is still a one minute to midnight opportunity of securing final concessions but the news has spooked the UK's anti-Europeans and the pro-business lobby alike.

Othmar Karas the MEP from Austria (that well known financial centre) who spearheads the negotiations for the EU parliament, said he saw no reason to “reopen the package” because of “internal problems” in the UK!  The government think the biggest setback for the UK is failing to win exemptions for bankers outside the EU. This will have important implications for banks such as HSBC,  Barclays and Standard Chartered whose bankers in New York or Singapore will be subject to the tighter rules.  As so often the government are wrong on this, without this territoriality London based bankers, working for EU banks, would all leave to ply their trade abroad - including the tens of thousands who work in London for non-British European Banks (Deutsche Bank, UBS, Credit Suisse, BNP Paribas, etc).

Sun setting on the City of London

One partial reprieve for the City could come in a potential delay to the implementation date until 2014.  Anyway the government have thrown in the towel its left to the bankers to contest this in the courts as anti-competitive and a restraint of trade.

Interestingly the delay to 2014 would mean the pay restrictions would only apply after next year’s bonus season and this will leave a year before the UK’s referendum on EU membership.  We could then have a perverse situation where our the country's hatred of  the bankers may make a Euro-skeptic UK more incline to vote against an exit.  We shall see.  It's hard to imagine that someone in 10 Downing Street has worked this out, that would be giving our executive too much credit!

This is probably a storm in a tea cup as the US regulators should follow this lead and implement a similar cap and then all the smart mathematicians and 'teenage scribblers' will have to find something else to do - banking is becoming BORING again!