Sir Henry is a ghost who inhabits the emails between my good self and a gentleman who lives in North Germany. This is one of his adventures - accidents. The "Colours" in military terms means the flag of course. In my hands, it became a little more elaborate. Windsor and Newton are a famous manufacturer of paints that my grandfather swore by.

Sir H was unlucky at Waterloo. You may or may not know that the "Artists Rifles" were actually formed in 1812. This was part of WilliamIV's commitment to Windsor and Newton. The Duke of Wellington had the Artists Rifles cycle across to the left flank where they could await Blucher. The point being that as artists they were good with colours, and so would be able to see Blucher before anyone else. There are problems associated with an infantry unit dedicated to painting pictures. Once it has all the easels are set up, the canvasses stretched in military order, the paint boxes all in the regulation line, it is less agile than a Roman Testudo. Unfortunately for Sir Henry, he was spotted by a squadron of French Hussars. These gentlemen, having chased off the British regiment, dismounted and took position behind the easels. Following the orders transmitted by the squadron's trumpeter, the seventy or so hussars started painting first red, then white and finally blue - but not in the shape of the union flag! No. They painted over the union flags so carefully sketched out by the Artists Rifles. They painted the colours of the French Republic.

There was nothing Sir Henry could do about it.

It was a disaster. The squadron of hussars carefully packed up the paint boxes as trophies, putting them in their saddlebags. The paintings were left as trophies. The Artists Rifles had to return, sans Blucher, sans Union Flags. They returned in disgrace with French flags! Wellington was incandescent. Thankfully, Blucher turned up. Unfortunately he did not have any blue paint, for the colours of the German imperial* flag were Red, White and Black - and so the French flags were overpainted as German flags. Sir Henry's humiliation was complete. (*This was before the Bundesrepublik, but even then, they would have carried no blue paint!).

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  All his life, David Cameron tried to be a failure. Even in this he managed to fail, despite a weakening back from having bent over too far at university. Again he failed here too, he failed to get his so coveted third, the mark of someone "who had better things to do than study". He failed to fail at cricket, hoping for a place as twelfth man in the third eleven which would mean he would not have to embarrass himself with showing off his weaknesses to the world. He so desparately wanted to show to the world that he could fail! He had failed to get into Trinity, where all the money was made, Christchurch was a dump by comparison. He so wanted to be like Mr Brown the chancellor, who in failing to become prime minister was his hero. As a back bencher, David was in heaven, sitting on the green leather with a copy of the Telegraph and not be disturbed even when the gong was rung for tiffin. All he needed was a glass of single malt and a small packet with a straw*.

David took solace in the fact that he usually failed to make it though the first paragraph even with the help of his forefinger next to each letter. Until that fateful day when Mr Brown did become prime minister, and stunned poor David into the realities of politics, his hero had succeeded where he should have failed. The next blow was the cruellest: he was asked to stand for the leadership, and confident in his failings, he unleashed his damp ego and actually stood up. That he was actually elected as leader of the conservatives was bad enough, but like Mr Major, he won an election he had tried hard to lose - after all, he might be asked to do more than just shout at the other party irrespective of what they might actually be saying. But even in failing to lose he lost, he had the indignity of dealing with ... liberals. Why could they not win? Had he not tried hard enough on their behalf? That damned voting system. His time in the shadows was at an end, where he could breeze through the day knowing that in twenty year's time he could make an easy living with after-dinner speaking. Sadly, his happy life where the cut crystal remained hidden under the bench were but memories. It was lucky George who could drink on the front benches without censure, and that only on one day of the year.

David found himself on the international stage. He found himself dealing with slimy Sarko, who so proudly showed his allegiance to the private banks of his country to make David's skin crawl. To show it so overtly was contrary to every cell in David's body: keeping an outer mantle of respectibility was for David essential whatever he was doing behind other people's backs. The French were just too gauche for him. However it was that very gorgon that turned his dreams finally to stony reality. That grey monolith from the DDR had looked him directly in the eye and told him that there would be no printing of money. How this hurt his pride and his ever hoped for vision of a level playing field where everyone could tilt their corner by unlimited quantitative easing. She was his antithesis and denoument: someone who stood firm against the storms and lashings where David hid in caves and cracks away from the storm. After all, he wasn't a wet, was he?

(*Not what you are thinking: a carton of Ribena).

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On February 31, 2012, after seemingly endless negotiations with creditors, all international holders of sovereign Greek debt will announce unanimously that they will forgive Greece 120% of her sovereign debt.

A spokesman for the Greek government Mr Dimitrios Konstatandinidis said this morning “Greece is fed up with all this foot dragging and it is now time to put a stop to it. We have decided to default on 120% of our sovereign debt. This way, we will have some money in the future to fund our railways and our profligate spending regimes. The British Government is to return the Elgin Marbles as part of this decision”.

A German spokesman Herr Thomas-Alexander Freiherr Spiegel von und zu Dachshund-Schwarzbrot “If we keep spending all our energies on 3% of the Eurozone's GDP (without really accomplishing anything), we will neglect the other 97% of the GDP and the cost will be much higher than paying Greece to stop being a dog in the manger. It is far cheaper to pay them off in this manner and let them p**ss it up against a wall instead of the London bankers doing it for them and asking for a commission for doing so”.

The result of this decision will be that the central government of Greece will not only have no foreign debt, but that it will in fact be paid by its former creditors. As a consequence, Greek banks, pension funds, insurance companies, etc. will find that their loans to the central government will be paid with a tasty dividend. Domestic debt in Greece does not fall under this rule, much to the annoyancee of all the rich Greeks who have parked their hard earned dosh in the London property market.

Some time during March 2012, Greece will discover that things are looking much rosier with all the German taxpayer's money rolling in, and the dividends from the London bond holders who so carelessly bought all those bonds in the hope of a quick killing. With the money pouring into Greece from the 20% clause on her bonds, there will be real money to pay for its overspending ways. The 120% haircut deal will allow Greece to avoid having to request finance from the international markets whilst it attempts to trash its creditworthiness even further.

The banking sector which previous to this agreement lost well over €1bn a month in liquidity because import payments exceeded foreign revenues from exports and services by that amount. With the decision of the Greek government this situation will change to one where money is flowing into the banking system. Capital flight will be stopped in its tracks because Greeks will be able again to speculate on their local markets in Athens instead of the London stock exchange.

House prices in Athens are already showing a 5% increase on last month and the sale of the Parthenon to an architectural scrapyard in China has been put on hold.

This new capital inflow from abroad will finance the Greek Government's deficits. This will allow the government to avoid taking any dramatic actions. Import taxes and capital controls are to be a thing of the past, and the Government can issue its bonds in the certain knowledge that they will profit handsomely from the action in the long run. These bonds will not only serve to finance the continued budget deficit but will also provide liquidity to the banking system for years to come.

 

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It is the classic win-win situation. It works, it is wonderful!  

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I was sent an email from a treasured friend this morning. It was in response to something I had sent him that I thought he might have found interesting. His response sparked a thought chain in me that made some thoughts coalesce that before had been floating freely and I did not have the ability to draw into focus.

Money is a much misunderstood phenomenon. I will gladly join in and say that I do not understand it properly either. However, there are certain things I have realized that should have an important bearing on your relationship to it.

I realized – now half an hour ago, and that includes making my morning mug of tea for I am English to that extent at least! I realized that money is like a farmer's crop. It is the result of hard work and good husbandry along with good quality soils that are cared for as much as the plants themselves. If you have a capital producing company, then this is in effect what you are doing. You must ask yourself how good is your “soil” and what you use for your economic compost, how carefully do you tend the economic plants that grow in your business and are they adequately watered? Understand how plants and nature provide us with what we need to live by, understand how treating them with the respect they need and they will respond in kind. A healthy plant is not diseased: a weak plant falls prey to illnesses that a healthy plant will shun.

Friends of ours had a healthy herd of cattle culled because they were surrounded by a serious and dangerous disease called Foot and Mouth (more here). The animals were healthy, and producing reasonable quantities of milk – yet surrounded by animals that were dying horribly. That their farmer was looking after their needs first and tending them as they needed tending meant he had healthy strong animals that resisted disease and its corruptions. His animals were happy where those whose owners were not so considerate were not. A herd that was the pride of two generations of farmers was slaughtered because an administrator made a mark on a piece of paper.

This thought is very fresh, yet for that reason it is worth considering. How do you run your business that it develops healthy products and healthy people and thereby a healthy profit? Do you run your business in a way that takes into account the cycles of expansion and contraction so obvious in outward nature. In business it is not so clear, yet there are times when economic activity is expanding – sometimes dangerously, sometimes poisonously – and times when economic activity naturally contracts and seeks to reaffirm itself in its roots. Kondratieff likened this to the seasons of the year, the effects are far less obvious and far less easy to understand. However if you have a healthy business, dealing with the winter time is something that will come easily for a healthy business can withdraw into itself and whilst less productive uses the long cold winter nights of a Kondratieff Winter to enjoy the fruits of the year's work. Not for nothing does Christmas stand at the darkest part of the year.

 

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Let us consider what forgetting does for us: it swipes away all our memories and leaves us with the present. In most cases, the present is quite an enjoyable state to exist in. You can look out of your window and see a grey November day that is none too warm but still nice enough to run around in (which I will be doing soon on my bicycle).

When you forget, you start to see things – like grass, blue skies, people. You no longer have a reference for them, and so they appear fresh, new and more importantly – - – delightful. It is the way one is able to enrich one’s soul. The most important thing here is that it has no need for anything else but you, yourself, right here and now. No money, no debts, no timetables or rush. It is pure freedom.

There comes a time of course when the electricity bill needs paying, and of course the problem is when we become too immersed in these pressing needs that one simply cannot forget. One’s diary is full until nine tonight, and tomorrow too. There is this TV programme and that meeting, a computer download that needs doing and yet another bill pops through and falls onto the mat. Your consciousness becomes restricted to the thing you are focussing on, in its entirety. Do this for too long and you will find that it becomes habitual – and as is usual in these cases – it assumes a greater form in that you think that it is the only way to exist. You become trained to the serial input of diary notes that require you to execute duties – even your hobbies get pencilled in and become subsumed into this clock-ticking world.

So how do you escape? Do you know that there **is** an escape at all? For consciousness has a nasty little habit of being self-confirming. Trying to break out of a circular argument is pretty damned hard, and breaking out of your apparent conscious state is even harder. That does not mean that it is impossible though.

Take five minutes each day – it is a long time if you are in a rush! – and start forgetting. Of course, if you start forgetting that you are in a rush, suddenly the rush stops. A little more practise will lead to an ability to plan and execute your days better: not for nothing do the masters reccommend fifteen minutes of meditation a day!

 

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 The death has been announced of the famous mountaineer Robbert Daal. He has died at the age of eighty seven. He was famous as one of the few mountaineers who concentrated their mountaineering feats to the geographical territory of the Low Countries. Robbert Daal was one of the now world famous Berg Daalers, and its hereditary chairman from 1954 onwards after the death of his father from a height related illness.

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