Not all showers are green

Research by Unilever has revealed that the long-held view that showers use much less water than baths is only partly true. While a traditional shower uses about 62 litres of water over the average usage of 8 seconds, some power showers can get through 136 litres in the same time. The average bath takes about 80 litres – but you can't take a book into the shower.

Dodgy government tax deals to be revisited

The "Independent" reports today that pressure on the government to review the “sweetheart” deals which were reached between the Inland Revenue (now part of HMRC) and large corporations has borne fruit. Goldman Sachs is not the only corporation coming under examination. Vodafone is also implicated. Credit goes to the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee, and to Private Eye magazine for keeping the matter in the public domain.

At a time when too many people on low incomes are being taxed and IR errors have led to demands for back payment, it is wrong for wealthy organisations to be seen to be getting away with paying less tax than they should. UK bondholders, too, may have started to see danger signals: part of Greece's debt problems stem from large-scale tax avoidance and evasion.

Good news on public borrowing, not so good on the deficit

In spite of gloomy remarks by the prime minister during his walkabout yesterday about the deficit reduction not going as well as anticipated, government borrowing in October was less than the chancellor's target. This results from slightly higher than expected tax revenues. However, these may not last if the gloomier predictions of the country's economic growth come true. We should glean more from the chancellor's statement next week.

Norwegian computer on a USB stick

FXI Technologies, a Norwegian start-up company, has announced their "cotton candy" device which aims to "allow users a single, secure point of access to all personal Cloud services and apps through their favorite operating system, while delivering a consistent experience on any screen. The device will serve as a companion to smartphones, tablets, notebook PC and Macs, as well add smart capabilities to existing displays, TVs, set top boxes and game consoles." It is based on a British-designed ARM central processor and uses Google's Android (in turn based on the Linux operating system). The FXI release is here.

Northern Rock: an answer

It appears that one of the answers about the timing of the reprivatisation of Northern Rock, raised in an earlier post, is that the Treasury was compelled to sell its majority stake under a commitment made by Labour. In a pact with the European Commission signed by Labour chancellor Alistair Darling, the UK government had to cede control by 2013. Clearly, the chancellor did not want to be in the position of having to make a "distressed" sale if information about the deadline leaked. Robert Peston's story is here.

Steve Webb's hopes and fears for pensions

Liberal Democrat Voice points to the Liberal Democrat Pension Minister's interview by Ros Altmann of Saga. He said: “We need to move from a system that’s fiendishly complicated, that still leaves millions of pensioners living in poverty, to one, ideally, where we have a single, simple, decent state pension on which people can build.”. However, he admitted that the Bank of England's programme of quantitative easing led to volatility, "not knowing what you are going to get and an issue about poor returns.”

Never mind Bilderberg: fear the Vampire Squid!

There have long been conspiracy theories about the Bilderberg group. However, Paddy Ashdown put it in its proper perspective in his published diaries: He says: "There are a group of anti-European conspiracy theorists who persist in believing that the Bilderberg Conferences (which incidentally I attended with John Smith [the Labour leader before Neil Kinnock]) are a deep laid Euro-American plot to return to Hitler-type policies by
imposing an United States of Europe. All I can say is that the (only) one which I was invited to attend in May
1989 seemed to me to be totally harmless and conspiracy free - and if anything mildly boringly left-of-centre."

What people should genuinely be worried about, if this article in The Independent is accurate, is the influence that merchant bank Goldman Sachs (nicknamed "the vampire squid" on Wall St.) has in European chancellories. Stephen Foley writes that: "The bank's two dozen-strong international advisers act as informal lobbyists for Goldman's interests with the politicians that regulate its work." He lists Mario Monti, the newly-appointed prime minister of Italy; Otmar Issing, who, as a board member of the German Bundesbank and then the European Central Bank (ECB), was one of the architects of the euro; Peter Sutherland, attorney general of Ireland in the 1980s and a former EU Competition Commissioner; Mario Draghi, who took over as president of the ECB on 1 November; and Petros Christodoulou, head of Greece's debt management agency, as either advisers or former employees of Goldman Sachs. Additonally, Lucas Papademos, Greece's new "technocrat" head of government, was at the National Bank of Greece when Goldman Sachs arranged the iffy money transfers which hid Greece's real indebtedness and enabled the country to be accepted into the eurozone.

Goldman Sachs were treasury advisors to the Blair and Brown governments, and have presumably continued under the coalition.

Why sell the good Northern Rock now?

Ed Balls has a good point, for once. The recovery may be slow, but it is happening and one would expect Northern Rock to be more valuable twelve months down the line. As it is, Virgin Money is picking up the part of Northern Rock which excludes the dodgy mortgages for at least £400m less than the government - that is, we taxpayers - have put in.

One explanation is that the Chancellor wants some ready money in a hurry, to finance some Keynesian measures to stimulate the economy or, worse, because JSA payouts are higher than anticipated. More likely is that the silver-tongued Richard Branson has persuaded Osborne that no other buyer, now or in the future, would promise to keep all the branches open and all the staff on the payroll for three years.

The remaining question is: how soon will it be before the Magpies display "Virgin" on their shirts, or will the sponsorship remain with the "bad" bank?