h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

From Steve Mawhinney, BBC News Editor's blog:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2008/10/storm_over_corfu.html

"What's more, that allegation - made in a letter to The Times, who understandably led on the story - came from Nat Rothschild, someone who up until that point at least had been a long-term friend of Mr Osborne's, so much so that he was hosting Mr Osborne and his family at his Corfu home, and his mother had been funding the shadow chancellor's private office to the tune of £190,000."


Pigs. Snouts. Troughs. Not just in the City. Before we even start with Oleg Deripaska.

That mother must have had a lot of money if she could afford to funnel that much into a shadow office.

(Not that I have any idea who these people are. )

Paul - The Rothchilds - super-hyper-super rich international clan. Described as financiers, winemakers, collectors and benefactors - and above all international BANKERS for hundreds of years. The one who befriended Osborne at ETON is learning his ropes as a Hedge-Fund Manager in The City (equiv. of Wall St.), and who gave Osborne a free holiday at his villa and introduced him to the Russian Billionaire. It's the latest scandal/almost scandal over here, since nobody knows for sure.

But it's not his snout I was referring to - it was that of George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer (the oppositio0n spokesman on the economy - expecting to be Chancellor of the Exchequer if/when the Tories get a majority instead of Labour at the next General Election).

Jab

Oh, you mean *those* Rothschilds!

They're so synonymous with gracious living that Noritake named one of their china patterns after them.

Okay, now I understand. Thanks for explaining.

(By the way, I think hedge funds suck. You are so right in comparing the people involved uin them to pigs. But don't let anyone know I said so.

It's true I mentioned Rothschild's own snout, but what I was getting at was Osborne's getting £190k from a Rothschild for 'his private office' and getting free luxury holidays with a millionaire hedge fund 'person' and being introduced to a dodgy Russian billionaire, while he's already making a pile as shadow chancellor and must have lots of money anyway (he went to Eton, the top expensive school). It's not just bankers who have their snouts in the trough.

Jab

Ahh yes! ...the Rothschilds, the banking house that by dint of heroic self sacrifice, in collaboration with Lloyd's of London and the party of the Duke of Wellington, engineered the longest period of 'inflation free' stable currencies in world history, lasting from the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1816, until the spring of 1910, when it all unraveled on the the world revolutions of the period, the abortive Communist revolution in Russia in which Lenin lost his brother, the revolution of Pancho Villa in Mexico (My grandma actually saw him when he was raiding across the border into New Mexico at the time. She was still a preschooler.), the democratic revolution of Sun Yat Sen in China, unrest in South Africa and Argentina, conditions in the inner cities of the American northeast that prompted Samuel Clemens to remark sarcastically "...all the situation needs now is a Savonarola...", conditions in the Germanic republics predisposing to the war fever presaging WW I, etc., devolving on the insidious device of the Germans of artificially inflating their currency in order to amortize the admittedly unfair and unreasonable war reparations debt imposed on them at Versailles, leading to the cascading economic destabilization which taken together with other factors like prohibition and the climate disaster of the dust bowl, eventually produced the catastrophic economic collapse of the great depression, WW II and the spiralling inflation that's been with us ever since, so ever-present people tend to think it something ordained by the laws of nature rather than a consequence of the inept crudities of too many of our economic planners...

People tend to forget that now long ago period of stable currencies, that in the autumn of 1916 one could buy a substantial steak dinner in an upscale restaurant in any major north Atlantic cosmopolitan city for a nickel, and still get that same steak dinner for a nickel as late spring of 1910. (I think we all have some idea what it costs now.)

Though there were occasional drastic local fluctuations in values of currencies (for example, the California gold rush), nontheless, mean trading values of the major world currencies remained constant over that period, the longest period of stable currencies in world history and a period of unparalleled growth of the world economy.

With respect to the topic of the thread, I'm personally of the opinion we should be making a determined effort to win back the Russian alliance which was one of the cornerstones of that success which was lost over the German Imperial Intelligence community financing Lenin's famous 'sealed train' and Bolshevik revolution, to the purpose of relieving themselves of having to fight on their eastern front, and reintegrate the Russian economy into the world mainstream. One has to be determined about if it is to happen, a prodigious task of damage repair. (Not least to the purpose of initiating a new growth cycle in the economy by means of economic development of the resources of outer space. (Encouraging that the Chinese are getting up to speed.))

Capeche?

It's time I went before starting!

My sentiments precisely, Pedantic.

Re. snouts etc., a Labour politician who's very litigious - so I won't name him here - is now in the frame as well, for being at that yacht at the same time and knowing the Russian billionaire (who's banned from Britain as an undesirable character) for two, and now he admits four years. The longer time is important because he was the European commissioner for trade and was in a position then to help this Russian. Not that there's any evidence against him, of course.

Here's just one of the many references now being made to him:

http://news.scotsman.com/politics/Mandelson-stance-defended.4603253.jp

Again: you don't have to be a banker to get your snout in the trough!

Jab

Considering how easy it is to get topic drift, and how many directions we could drift in now (Napoleonic wars? Currency stability, which by the way I already knew about? Pancho Villa? The hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic? And many others....), I am fascinated by this thread.

But it should have been a fairly short thread. The dodgy billionaire and Rothschild scion and shadow minister of the exchequer are all variations on things we've seen in many other times and places....

Believe it or not Paul, I intended this mainly to be an announcement of the latest trough incident, while the rest of us struggle, rather than a discussion thread. I agree we didn't need a long thread, so let's call it a day while it's still short.

Jab

Fine with me.