Something for the weekend

I don't know which is worse - day after day of ever more worrying financial headlines or the unedifying behaviours of celebrities that have crowded this week's news in the UK.

I do know that continuing fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo should be dominating discussions among world leaders just now. According to some estimates as many as 5m lives have been lost in this troubled country over the past 40 years. The factional fighting in eastern Congo is symptomatic of the conflicts ravaging Africa in which the western powers are reluctant to intervene (it never stopped them in the days of empire and it does not stop western mining interests today).

Chattering classes

Sadly, we live in a self-absorbed materialist world that has far more enthusiasm for debating the rights and wrongs of a BBC radio broadcast, than it has to debate a solution for the troubles in Africa. After all, the chattering classes need something other than house prices for the pudding course.

Do I think Jonathan Ross is talented? Yes. Do I think he is overpaid? Vastly. Do I think he should be fired? Without doubt. Do I think the BBC has lost its way? Yes. Do I think Andrew Sachs was right to feel offended? Of course. Do I think his granddaughter stands to make a small fortune by carefully exploiting the celebrity earnings potential of all this publicity through the well-paid advice of Max Clifford? Yes, in less time than it takes me to say Jade Goody.

Do I believe that the real tragedy of this story is that it exposes our society's distorted value system? I do and I don't think I am stretching credulity to say that weakening values have created an alarming moral vacuum in Western society that continues to be exploited by Islamic extremism.

Mosque sermons

It's not the reason behind such extremism, but it makes it more difficult for Islamic parents in western countries to impose their own value systems within their families when they see them undermined in this way.

We have seen the BBC stories in the British press but few of us in the UK will be exposed to the way such behaviours are condemned in Friday afternoon mosque sermons. Of course, there will be sermonising in all religions over this affair. But not all will have the potential to feed the disaffected minds of young hot heads who may, too readily, allow themselves to fall for the dangerous anti-western doctrine of Al-Qaeda.

One sermon does not an extremist make. It doesn't happen like that. The outrages of 9/11 and 7/7 were underpinned by drip-fed, hate-filled ideologies emerging initially from those who demanded Islamic states in Islamic lands. Britain is not an Islamic state but we know that Al-Qaeda's influence has taken root here.

Bomb victim

The leader of the 7/7 bombers, Mohammad Sidique Khan, had a middle class background, earning enough to make frequent trips to Pakistan and Afghanistan. He and his fellow bombers killed 52 innocent people that day in 2005 and one other indirectly. This was Jean Charles de Menenzes, whose inquest is being held this week.

Whatever the verdict of the inquest, whatever blame is directed at the armed police who shot him, de Menenzes was as much a victim of the bombings as those who died in the initial blasts.

If there was tragedy in that death, we can recognise heroism elsewhere in the George medal awarded to Royal Marine lance corporal Matthew Croucher who saved the lives of others and his own by throwing his body over a grenade as it was about to explode.

Servicemen and women have paid a high price fighting what George W Bush has called the "war against terror." They sign up for a life of active duty as an alternative to the frothy, shallow existence that characterises our gossipy obsession with celebrity.

Juvenile actions

It's difficult to set such heroism against the juvenile actions of Ross and his co-presenter Russell Brand who used valuable radio air time to such dismal effect.

Soldiers are not innocents. They have their own prejudices. But most of them do stand for something, even if, in some cases, it is little other than the laudable principle of fighting for your friends.

I couldn't see any principles, however, in the behaviours of Brand and Ross. Brand, at least, did one honorable thing and resigned. Ross has not even been capable of that, allowing managers to take the blame for his irresponsible actions.

Incredibly the BBC, even now, has yet to be convinced that it does not need these people, such is its attachment to a fickle and distracted "youf" audience. Ross is paid large sums because of his ability to connect with younger viewers.

Moral guidance

I'm not saying he should be dispatching moral guidance in every breath but he understands full well that some of the things he does are reprehensible, then does them anyway simply because he knows (or thinks) he can get away with it. Being outrageous has paid his wages. There should be no second chances this time.

Others have flown too close to the sun in the past. Remember Simon Dee, the former BBC presenter who abandoned his given name, Cyril Nicholas Henty-Dodd? If not, then perhaps I have made my point that contrition can go only so far.

Guilt fests

Meanwhile, when the dust has settled on this nasty little drama, much greater suffering in this world will continue to struggle for our attention. But perhaps we needn't worry about that until Children-in-Need and Comic Relief days when the luvvies, Ross included no doubt, will lead us in these perennial chuck-some-money-at-it guilt-assuaging fests.

No I'm certainly not blaming Jonathan Ross, the BBC and the rest of the media for Islamic terrorism. But I do think there is a link between Islamic intolerance and Western moral decline. Every terrible outrage demands that we hold a mirror to our own behaviours, actions and beliefs.

The BBC used to stand for something important and solid in our society that attracted and continues to attract the respect of foreign regimes. Its values used to be our values. It really is a power for good in this world but, with power, comes responsibility and that must be exercised judiciously. The second chance should be reserved for a rare lapse of taste. There was nothing rare about this one.

Russian oligarchs - a glossary of terms

Why do we only ever seem to hear of Russian oligarchs? What is an oligarch anyway and why aren't there British or American oligarchs?

If my dictionary is correct the definition that seems most applicable for its media use is: member of an oligarchy - a small clique of private citizens who exert a strong influence on government.

Who in the UK might fit that clique definition? I suppose government advisers and the heads of business and banking bodies could be said to be part of the British oligarchy. But we would never describe Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England or Richard Lambert, director general of the Confederation of British Industry as oligarchs. Nor would we talk about a British oligarchy.

So there must be new connotations, new assumptions, associated with media use of the phrase "Russian Oligarch". Do I detect the whiff of corruption? Gangsterdom, even? I think so. I think that the phrase, as used in the popular press, has come to be regarded by some of us, possibly most of us, as a codeword, a euphemism, for "dodgy individual". That, I believe, is the intention of those who use it and the conclusion of those who read it.

So when we read allegations that George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, has been trying to solicit a Conservative Party donation from a Russian oligarch while enjoying hospitality on the oligarch's yacht we are being invited to interpret certain words and phrases.

For Russian Oligarch read: "rich and powerful but dodgy individual who gained his vast wealth by various nefarious means, including favours and patronage, but certainly not through hard work, scholarship and academic diligence."

For yacht read: "Expensive, lavish, decadent, wasteful, ostentatious luxury possession beyond the means of most people that today is even eschewed by Royalty, however reluctantly, as an unjustified drain on the privy purse." Do not, under any circumstances, read: "A boat with sails."

For Conservative Party read: "Grubby, nest feathering, opportunists prepared to sell their own grandmothers, not to mention hitherto strongly held principles based on thrift, hard work and individual freedoms, for a chance to line their party coffers."

For Corfu read: "Tacky Mediterranean haunt of new money, "celebrities", smooching politicians, gas-guzzling motor launches misleadingly described as "yachts" and the occasional Russian oligarch.

For George Osborne read: "Numpty."

Laughing baby

I had to see for myself what amused the Queen and 63m others. I see from the geekProject website (very much what it says on the tin) that the baby boy's name is William. I see also that the funny noises are an attempt to impersonate a microwave oven.

As someone commented on the Youtube web site, it's a pity he didn't have a rusk-company sponsored bib with pay-per-click advertising.

Poor lad. All this attention means that Fleet Street's finest are about to descend on his doorstep.

A few more seconds......

Rob has passed me some interesting statistics for his new game, Panda: Tactical Sniper, mentioned in earlier blogs below (Fifteen seconds of fame and Panda: Tactical Sniper).

In one day, yesterday, it was played 80,000 times bringing his worldwide play total to 190,000 since Monday. It has been played so far in 159 countries and has been hosted by 149 different web sites. Mochiads.com, the advertising company that concentrates on such games, awarded him its $100 game-of-the-week prize.

Malcolm Gladwell (discussed here) once wrote about something he called a "tipping point" in his book of the same name, noting the multiplying phenomenon when something takes off. But on today's web the tipping point rush is so rapid that it overwhelms like a wave and recedes just as rapidly.

There remains an issue of sustainability for such games but perhaps that is not important. No-one ever talked about sustainability in cigarette-card collecting or among playground games such as Pokemon cards (although Pokemon itself is still going). These things come and go but, in the meantime, Rob's target for this one is a million plays and he just might get it.

Fish and chip revival plan

If the Icelandic banks don't pay up perhaps all those English local authorities owed money (they can't say they were never warned) should send in the bailiffs. They wouldn't get much for the assets in Reykjavik although it has a nice church (Hallgrímskirkja, pictured). An administrator could probably sell the Blue Lagoon thermal springs for a tidy sum to a company such as Disney.

There are big aluminium smelting plants too but they would have to be sold as English councils know nothing about smelting. On the other hand the councils could send in their parking experts to paint a few yellow lines. The Icelanders park almost anywhere which makes them easy meat for our dedicated urban traffic wardens.

My favourite assets, however, are in the water. First there's all those salmon rivers. I would happily look after them for a small fee. Better than salmon, however, are the cod stocks. It would be a neat revenge for losing the Cod Wars and could herald a long overdue revival of fish and chip shops.

If none of the above is enough we could lay a pipeline to pump away Iceland's geothermal heat that could be redirected to the council estates of those local authorities with funds at risk. Finally they can give us back our women! But fish and chips first please.

Fifteen seconds of fame

It's been a big week for Rob's game. I Googled Panda, Tactical Sniper this morning and came up with nearly 340,000 pages - not all the game, obviously, but certainly all the early references take me to it.

I've just been chatting with Rob in Lille on Skype. In the short time we were talking some 1,000 people started playing his game in different parts of the world.

He explained the publishing process to me. First he agreed a deal with the owner of the Bubblebox.com site. When the game was published there on Monday it was still in "test" and the reactions of people who played it highlighted one or two glitches which were ironed out by yesterday (Thursday) when it was released generally.

The way this works is that some web sites pick it up and put it on their sites while he can submit it to others.

Since Monday the game has been played more than 70,000 times and this figure is probably already out of date by the time I can write and publish this blog. I know that the internet deals with big numbers but the figures for this and other such games are bringing home to me the multiplying factors of the web, particularly among that early teen age group that comprises the "market."

I use that word cautiously since we usually associate markets with financial transactions but in the flash game world very little money is changing hands, one reason why it has been left by the big commercial players to the masses of youngsters who enjoy making and playing games for themselves.

"There is such fast turnover in these games that there is no time for anyone to review them before players move on to the next one," says Rob. Not so much 15 minutes of fame, then, but 15 seconds.

It's like a sophisticated version of children chalking squares on the playground for a game of hopscotch. But revenues are being earned through advertising and these can accumulate to reasonable earnings for the most popular games.

The top games, says Rob, might earn as much as $10,000 through advertising but better money can be earned through a site sponsorship.

One possibility that Rob has not yet explored is earnings through product placement. His game features a well known biscuit brand - HobNobs - but he doesn't have a deal there. Games that do have such arrangements are called "advergames".

No, Rob, isn't going to be able to retire on his gangster Panda but he's learning a lot about internet publishing and marketing. At the design stage he was discussing the potential appeal of marrying the puzzle game format with that of shooting games. That's innovative stuff.

Oh yes, and he's studying maths too, in French, just now. This is not a "full time" industry. It comprises thousands of mostly young people all over the world, like this chap who has done Rob's art work, working in their spare time, rarely meeting with each other co-operating instead through instant messaging. It's a different world.

Panda: Tactical Sniper

I don't play computer games much but my middle son, Robert, who began to take an interest in the summer when he created this game, has moved on with a new game called Panda: Tactical Sniper.

It was published for the first time yesterday (Monday, October 13) and has been played almost 30,000 times already. That seems to me an astonishing figure yet it is still a comparatively modest number compared with some of the industry leaders.

I say "industry" because this kind of games publishing is an industry in its own right. Rob has been paid a good fee up front for the work (with bonuses if it succeeds) and an artist was employed to improve on his work.

This particular genre is a "sniper game." Rob is no fan of gun games but they are a popular choice among young adolescent males. He is more in to problem-solving and he has worked the sniping activity in to a puzzle game that is no pushover.

Of course it works on both levels and those who want to rack up a big score go through it again for speed and accuracy once they have worked out the puzzles. I have been looking at a few of the other games on this site and some are very clever indeed.

It's easy to be put off by all the advertising on the sites but in this world where sites such as Facebook have still to make a profit this is one part of the internet that really works as a business.

I sent him a couple of my own ideas this morning which failed to impress. Instead (between his studies) he is engaged in creating an obvious follow up - Panda II.

George Mallory's boot

In all the recent financial chaos I have forgotten to write about a more pleasant experience involving an Earthwatch meeting and a visit to the Royal Geographical Society.

I have been a trustee of Earthwatch Europe for many years and welcomed a recent suggestion to pool many of the resources of European and US, Japanese and Australian affiliates.

Because of charity law we cannot pool financial resources and must remain distinct charities but that has not prevented us from creating a joint body which shares many of the same employees, thus preventing duplication of expensive staff.

The respective charity trustees and senior staff met, therefore, over two days in London to agree the ground rules and structure of the organisation in future (or "going forward") as we were reminded constantly.

Have you noticed how much that needless phrase is used by executives? We're not standing still or going backwards, so why do some feel the need to be using the words "going forward" all the time? The answer is that the phrase is used unconsciously like much other management jargon as a kind of "filler".

Anyway after spending most of the day going forward at the RGS it was exciting to go back in time as we were led down to the research rooms where a table had been laid out with some of the prize exhibits from the society's collection of two million items (including a million maps).

There was George Mallory's boot recovered from the slopes of Everest, an oxygen pack from the 1953 successful Everest expedition led by Sir John Hunt, a Burberry's hood worn by Sir Ernest Shackleton, and, best of all the hats worn by David Livingstone and Henry Morton Stanley at their historic meeting in Africa. It made the hair stand up on the back of your neck.

It felt very special to be viewing these treasures but - and this is the great thing about the society's collection - these items are there for any of us to see on request if we pay the modest fee for a research day.

Earthwatch has moved on some, since I became a trustee and today it plays an ever strengthening role in partnering with companies, helping to enlighten employees on some of the most pressing environmental issues of our times. One of its strongest partnerships has been established with HSBC Bank. At a time that the banking sector is struggling it is good to see that this programme is demonstrating the positive measures that can be undertaken by enlightened employers.

Buried treasure

Talking of stuffing money in mattresses, we should remember that this was an attractive option for some people no more than a couple of generations ago.

I must have been about 16 or 17 years old when my maternal grandmother died, aged about 90. She was born in the 19th century with attitudes to match. She really did have an aspidistra in her best room with pictures of angels on the wall.

As far as I knew she didn't have a bean but when she died there was a share out for the grandchildren. I was given £150 in fusty one pound notes that had been buried in a biscuit tin in my Uncle Dennis's council allotment greenhouse.

All those years I had grubbed around in the soil among the brassicas and the chrysanthemums (he was known for his chrysanths), never realising that hidden among their roots was a box of cash. There was probably a thousand pounds which would have been worth far more had it been invested in a building society.

But my grandmother didn't trust banks because she had lived through the Wall Street Crash and the great depression. How silly. Being a sensible young man I took the money and bought a car with it. The car, a Hillman Imp, was constantly breaking down and absorbed all my spare cash. It broke down so many times that in the end I had to call a scrap yard to tow it away. There's probably a parable in all this but I can't think of one.

Not our fault

In all the furore over the banking crisis it's easy to forget the root cause of our problems. We can blame the banks as much as we like for the credit crunch but ultimately this crisis is of our own making. It's not the fault of governments and banks but of borrowers who take on more debt than they can sustain in the long term.

But there wouldn't be borrowers without lenders, you may say. That's true. There is no doubt that lending policies in too many institutions have been woefully relaxed. Lending and borrowing involves risk - the bigger the risk, the more you stand to make if you pull it off. The banks can be blamed for the way they dressed up and traded this risk, even fooling themselves in to thinking they were simply being sophisticated, until it was too late.

But how can people be blamed for simply wanting to improve their lives? When house prices are rising we can see the way that those with mortgages enjoy the increasing values in their homes.

Equally, those with some cash to invest could be tempted in to buy-to-let arrangements. I recall friends telling me about the flats they had bought to rent out. Many of them, I am sure, did quite well. Only now, as prices and rents fall are they seeing their gains shrink somewhat, but most of them, I have no doubt, are still ahead. Only those who bought at the top of the market are suffering just now although their numbers will increase as the market falls.

I have lost money in shares - bank shares to be precise. They seemed a good investment three years ago. Nothing seemed more solid than a bank. But my stock market investments were relatively small (but big enough) so the pain is bearable (just).

One thing you notice among investors is that there is always a risk/return ratio. Why would anyone deposit money with an Icelandic bank, I wondered? Anyone could see that Iceland's economy didn't make sense. How can a country with a population the size of a small English city, lot of cod but not much else, be so prosperous? I don't suppose it worried those local authorities who decided that a seven per cent return in an Icelandic bank was better than five per cent in the UK. An extra two per cent can cloud your judgement.

Equally the return on buy-to-let five years ago was more like 9 per cent per annum and then there was the capital gain in the rising property price for extras.

There are people out there - lots of people - with money to invest who will tell you that only mugs would settle for five per cent, or at least they were saying that a year ago.

Today we may need to settle for something less and we may be saying goodbye to free banking too. That's one of the realities about banks. We might not feel too kindly disposed to them just now but we wouldn't want to be without them.

I get a great deal from my bank. It pays me good rates of interest on my deposit account and handles all my transactions without charging me, even paying a little bit of interest on my current account. I realise that this service is not free. It is costing the bank more to service my account, I am sure, than it makes in interest from my deposits. Maybe not. Maybe the bank is winning. I don't care. The point is that I feel I'm getting a good deal.

I don't have to carry around lots of cash. There are holes in the wall that give me money on demand. I can pay for a lot of things with a plastic card for which I get billed after payment and which gives me money back when I use it. That seems a good deal as long as I settle my account every month.

I don't borrow from banks, from credit card lenders or any institution. I have a little bowl of change for parking meters and a wallet with enough cash - pounds and Euros - to cover taxi fares, cups of coffee and an occasional copy of Private Eye. The house mortgage was paid off years ago before I told my employers I wanted to leave and they me gave a large sum of money to go away.

In some ways this troubles me. I feel too bloody comfortable and think that a bit of financial hardship would be motivational. To deal with this I tell myself I am not well off and choose friends (with a few fine and honorable exceptions) who are considerably better off than I am. Since wealth is relative this means I can happily wallow in the understanding that I am less well healed than many of those I know.

But this isn't poverty. All these newspaper headlines and panic reactions are a symptom of middle class angst - people on the up who have just taken a tumble.

Real poverty is something else, something consigned to the news in brief columns about atrocities and aids victims in Africa. It doesn't have a face beyond the clips they make for Children in Need with a visiting celebrity trembling with horror and frustration at the sight of a malnourished child.

We must, therefore, suffer our pain from the credit crunch with a sense of perspective. Perhaps we can't afford the cruise or that new cooker or the kitchen makeover or the X-Box 360. We may even have to forgo a bonus or possibly even a pay rise. But if we have our health and our families and food on the table we shouldn't complain. But we shall because the crisis wasn't our fault. We're all blameless.

Cash in hand

I can't keep up with all this bank and economics stuff any more. Ships/icebergs/Iceland/lifeboats. Have you noticed how everyone is an expert in finance all of a sudden, wandering around quoting J. K. Galbraith at every opportunity?

Last night at a Royal Society for the Arts dinner the conversation on both sides of my plate was all about the banking crisis. The man on my left used to work for the Bank of England and he didn't know what was going on.

On my right was a lawyer who kept poodles and drove a Mercedes. And she didn't know either. "Well of course, we need banks. We're not going to be taking our cash out in a suitcase are we?" I said to her.

"I'm thinking of doing just that," she said. "I have a big safe at home and I'm going to put my money there for a while."

What does this mean? If lawyers who keep poodles and drive Mercs are panicking perhaps there's going to be a rush to stuff the nation's mattresses and tea caddies with freshly minted notes. I wonder how house-safe sales are going? If this carries on, burglary is going to get interesting again.

Burgling prospects have been so poor in recent years with one or two exceptions. But not everyone is sitting on an £80m plus art collection as Harry Hyams was. Most burglars have to settle for the video recorder and an X-Box 360.

But if people are stashing cash again there could be new openings for the old-style safe crackers who thought their days were over. Burglary may become trendy again. M&S could launch a range of black-and-white hooped jumpers (cashmere naturally) and silk masks for long dormant tea-leaves who, as I write, are rummaging in their cupboards for dusty swag bags and ageing stethoscopes.