Half Pointless

I really do not understand the thinking behind the Bank of England's latest 50bp cut.

Lower interest rates will not, in my opinion, help that much (if at all). They may even be counterproductive. Each further cut must have less and less of an effect for technical and practical reasons.

In any case, if lower rates were going to produce the desired effect then surely 3% in the last three months would have done the trick. Most importantly, there simply has been no time to assess the impact of these dramatic cuts, or indeed of many of the measures put in place in this or other majjot economies.

Lastly, if they think that 5% to 2% hasn't worked (including 1% just a month ago), why do they think a further 0.5% will now help ? They should in that case have cut to zero and got it over with.

So the only reason for cutting now is that they intended to cut all along, and they want to be seen to be doing something.

There is no sense is just reacting to the continuing worsening of the economic conditions - what is happening now is simply the inevitable follow through on what has already happened.

There needs to be a better reason for the cuts than just the assumption that it will somehow fix the current symptons.

It is true that for some people, the effect of the cut will be to increase their monthly income.

However, this is only the case for borrowers, and then only if they have a variable rate mortgage, and then only if their lender passes on the cut (which there are sound reasons not to) and even then there is little reason to assume they will choose to consume more with the saving, especially if their job is in jeopardy (which it is).

A direct tax subsidy on mortgages would have been better in that case, and less arbitrary.

There is little practical relationship between the bank's official rate and the price of many forms of personal or commercial credit and, especially, there is little reason to suppose the lowering of the rate will create credit appetite - either by lenders (why should they lend ?) or borrowers (why should they borrow, and by the way, why does the Government want them to borrow ?)

I would think a much more suitable solution would be for the Government to lend (and provide other liquidity) directly to businesses through a nationalised institution set up for that purpose rather than trying to "push string" by making the banks do this job when it makes sense for them to do the opposite.

This might, of course, become a moot distinction as I would expect a very significant possibility of full nationalisation of the banks soon enough anyway.

Meanwhile, although it will still make little sense, I imagine we can expect to see 0.5% official rates later this year.

On Socks and CDs

The disappearing and sometimes re-appearing of socks is well documented. Re-appearances are usually in asynchronous pairs, obviously.

I have noticed the same phenomenon in CDs and their cases. Some of my favourite CDs have had a habit of vanishing. In some cases, when I finally gave up and threw away the box, the CD then turned up. One particular album went missing and I actually threw away the box and bought a fresh copy. Whereupon the original disc came to light, only to be subsequently followed by the loss of BOTH discs.

However, today I did actually find both copies of A Secret History by The Divine Comedy, hiding behind one copy of Dad Rocks (disc2) in a Hoosiers box in Matt's room. That solves that particular mystery.

I was doing a large-scale cleanup of my discs because I have been loading them into iTunes - hence the search.

I am late to iPods, but now that Karen bought me a nano for Xmas, I am discovering what everyone is so excited about.

It looks like by the time I have finished with the uploading, I may have about 2,000 songs on the tiniest thing - the incredible fact is that the 1in x 2in (maybe it's a bit bigger than that, but not by much, and it is as half as thick as the slimmest mobile phones) has to contain a screen, a battery and the actual storage gizmos. Incredible.

So far I have not tried the iPod in action at the poker table. I am not sure I will - I prefer to be able to hear everything that is going on. But it is great for the daily cycle.

I am a convert, no question !

B-icicle Ride

I have had some success with the resolution to get cycling every day. I did miss one day (we're allowed a mulligan surely) when I allowed it to get too late and dark so, when this threatened to happen again, I felt the need to make all efforts.

Yes it was dark, and it was cold, but these seemed to be manageable issues.

More of an issue was the shed lock - frozen shut !

I eventually dealt with that, and got underway. I was not too keen on cycling on the roads, so spent some of the time cycling on the pavements which were like sheets of ice although the bike handled that pretty well.

It's continuing to be cold, so more ice-cycling is on the cards I think.

Wish You Were Here ?

One of the questions I am frequently asked is some form of "do you wish you were still in the markets?"

Former colleagues that I speak to assure me it is pretty hellish, which makes sense. I'm sure morale is very low, and making lots of people redundant is never fun.

I have not really missed work, as such, since I left. I do miss the people, and I don't like being out of touch with what all those people are doing now. I am loosely in touch with quite a few, but it's not the same as being in daily contact.

But, even though I loved what I was doing for nearly 20 years, I'm not pining for the actual job itself.

I think if I had still been in situ when the worst hit, I would have felt compelled to stay aboard for the sake of the rest of the team (if I wasn't fired !). Since we are not remotely near coming out the other side this would have led to many months of long hours and hard work for (relatively) little reward. It would have been less painful for me than for many people, of course, and I think I would have come to terms with the "game change".

It would have been / is pretty miserable out there, but there is definitely a part of me that would have found it exciting to trade through these historic conditions.

A lot of people, when I left, assumed that I intended to come back fairly quickly. This was never my plan, although I equally never ruled out a return. Of course, the situation has changed so much that it's not clear what I would return to !

Overall, I would say 1 part in 10 really regrets not being there for the show, but actively seeking to get back in would be another matter altogether !

Seat of Learning

We haven't bought a lot in the recent sales (and firesales). What we did buy was some new office chairs.

Karen needed a new one due to a broken wheel. A correctly fitting castor for a chair is, I suspect, high up in the list of low-value items that you want to buy to avoid the replacement of a much higher-value item (the whole chair) but the chances of doing so are inversely-proportional to the theoretical cost of the spare part.

The problem is exacerbated nowadays by the excessive cheapness of the "whole thing". We bought office chairs for the boys for about £30 - nice-looking faux-leather swivelling-and-titling ones. I have probably spent £100 in hourly-charged time looking for a spare wheel for Karen's chair. I think our solution is going to be to throw it away but keep the 4 remaining wheels for spares - that seems to be a reasonable approach !

So, the boys' chairs needed assembling. On the whole I was very impressed with the instructions. And the packing. And the lack of missingness of small parts.

It was a straightforward task, really. However, when I had finished Harry's and was tightening all the bolts, I tested the chair out. It seemed a little upright, and it didn't seem to tilt. No, it did have some tilt, but it only tilted forwards. Odd. Of course, I realised I had assembled it "back to front". Not an easy thing to do, you might think, especially as I had taken some trouble to match "front" with "front" markings.

This always seems to happen in DIY. You take great care to - say - measure the distance between 2 holes and make it dead level. Then, when you drill, the wall collapses making the hole 2inches wide and the whole exercise pointless. Or, you construct the object with precision only to find that one part had to be put in place at the very beginning.

In this case, the manufacturers had cleverly designed the whole kit to be symmetrical (so no need to fabricate different "Left" and "Right" arms. This meant it was possible to put the thing together more or less perfectly whilst still being inside out, so to speak.

The good news was that I had a second one to put together, so that the learn-by-doing exercise was not put entirely to waste.

Virtuous Cycle

Amongst the New Year's resolutions, I have decided that it would be a good idea to do a bit of cycling every day. Karen says I may last a week, but I think I can do better than that!

Yesterday, on day 1 of X, the only cycling I actually managed to fit in was to bike down to Halfords to buy two new inner tubes for the boys' bikes. I had been doing the decent thing and pumping up the tyres ahead of a planned cycle ride today, when one burst with irreparable damage and the valve broke on another.

I had just spent an age trying to adjust the front derailleur on my bike - the mechanism is only slightly less unintuitive than those hinges in kitchen cabinets. As a result it was pretty late when I finally set off

Bedford is very cycle-friendly: you can get almost anywhere without the need to cycle actually on the road, which was handy in the dark. Mind you, I picked up a bright yellow-shiny jacket in Halfords which I put to use on the ride back. It turns out it is even shinier if you don't wear it inside out !

Today's planned trip to Grafham Water to cycle was scaled back to a trip down to Bedford Marina due to concern over Harry's injury from the "tube game". Karen also didn't seem all that keen when we actually got there, but after a few miles everyone was in the spirit !

Admittedly the preparations and all the loading/unloading took twice as long as the cycle ride, but now we're used to it !

Other New Year's resolutions include more regular posting on the blogs, so watch this place !

Games People Play

I have always loved games. Card games, certainly, but also board games and puzzles and quizzes etc. It would be an exaggeration to say I love sport, but I do enjoy watching and following sports for some of the same reasons I like playing games.

Clearly, poker and bridge are the main games holding my attention recently. However, when I was at school, I used to play scrabble, backgammon, chess etc.

I enjoyed them all although I wasn't all that good at them, I suppose. Good enough to beat most people I played against, certainly, but you come to realise that this is a long way from actually being good.

In chess, where I was definitely only average+, it is relatively easy to appreciate that the good players are far better. But in a game like scrabble, without strong competition, it is easy not to realise just how good the good players can be.

In fact, it was only recently when I read a Times scrabble column that I began to see that there are levels and levels beyond just knowing a lot of words and being quick to spot where to play them.

The situation posed did not ask which was the best score we could make, but invited us to consider - based on our inference on which letters our opponent probably held - where to play defensively to prevent him from making a powerful move on later turns.

It never occurred to me to be counting the letters, let alone for tactical defense ! When I was playing at school I am not sure I even knew about the 50-point bonus for using all 7 letters, which seems to be a vital weapon in a competitive match.

I haven't played scrabble for ages. I am only thinking about it now because someone on facebook challenged me. In that game, I have already played "LANDINGS" for the 7 letter bonus and also some very odd 2 letter words including "CH".

The online game handily has a listing of all the 2 letter words. I always knew that a full knowledge of these was important, but I had never actually got around to learning them.

In poker there is no shortage of strong competition to spur one on. But whereas in scrabble (like poker, a skillful game, with a luck element) you're going to get the message very quickly, in poker there is so much "noise" that any skill deficit is often disguised.

But there should be no doubt that proper and effective study of the game is going to make a big difference. I still haven't done enough of that, I know.

Karen, Harry and I went to a friend's house on New Year's Eve (12 of us altogether aged 12 - 50ish). It was a very successful evening, and memorable for the games Sarah and Derek came up with.

I thought they were very suitable. They weren't lewd, didn't involve drinking, were genuinely open to all ages and non-threatening (no forfeits) and didn't require any specialist knowledge.

There was Pictureka! (an actual board game), Chase the Ace (a well-known and very easy card game, that works with any number of players), Spoons (not sure I have ever played that before, but it was fun !).

Then there was the "tube game". You must pick up a cardboard tube with your mouth (using no hands, your knees cannot touch the ground, neither you nor the tube can fall over during your go). The tube is cut after each turn, so it gets shorter and shorter (harder and harder to pick up). Realistically the game can only be won by the youngsters, although anyone can manage it in the early stages.

Cameron won, but not before Harry put up a really spirited 2nd-place effort. He accidentally invented a new technique (I liken it to the innovation that was the Fosbury Flop). He was able to just reach the tube, then grab it with his mouth and perform a forward roll to land safely with the tube in mouth. This was judged valid.

Then there was the "chocolate game" - involving dice, hats, scarf and gloves, chocolate and mayhem !

One excellent feature of all the games - an ingredient of the best "fun" games - is that the rules were somewhat fluid. It's important that there are enough agreed rules to allow the games to get underway, but it's even better if the rules are then argued about and developed in a friendly way as the game proceeds.

In "spoons" there were debates over "feinting", and the speed of the pass, and the positioning of the spoons relative to the players and so on. In "chocolate", the requirement to throw a double six was quickly re-negotiated. In "tube", Harry's flop-tactic was allowed, and then Cameron won back the final advantage by successfully lobbying to remove the tray on which the tube had stood, allowing him to place his feet nearer the target.

These adaptations added greatly to the success of all the games.

Today, Harry is back on the XBOX360. I maintain that those are not real games. It may be another 364 days until we can play some proper games again !