Brian Bollen's Blog

Blockchain bollocks

I have just read the first few papers of a so-called white paper (hang on, isn't white one of the favourite colours for Andrex?) on yet another exciting, thrilling, pioneering, market-leading, world-changing development in blockchain.

I can honestly say I have never read such concentrated and utter bollocks anywhere in my entire life. Then again, a foreign idiot who rang me cold on the phone the other day started shouting at me the other day and started calling me a liar because I dismissed supposed cryptocurrencies in the manner of someone who has spent an entire professional life in and around international institutional finance.

Given the choice between acquiring a cryptocurrency and cash substitute vouchers from John Lewis & Partners, I'd opt for the vouchers from John Lewis & Partners every time...

Hitler's British Traitors

Title: Hitler’s British Traitors

Author: Tim Tate

Publisher: Icon Books

Pps: 454 including notes and index

Price: £25

Publication date: September 6 2018

ISBN: 978-1-78578-405-7

 

I would have thought that it was well nigh impossible to publish a book containing reams of factual material about events before and during World War II (WWII) that most people will never have read before.

But Tim Tate has done just that with this book, subtitled The Secret History of Spies, Saboteurs and Fifth Columnists, ‘drawing on hundreds of declassified official files – many of them previously unpublished’ as the blurb inside the front cover states.

As the blurb continues, this book ‘uncovers the largely unknown history of more than 70 British traitors who were convicted, mostly in secret trials, of working to help Nazi Germany win the war, and several hundred British fascists who were interned without trial on evidence that they were working on behalf of the enemy’.

Escaping Hitler: Heroic True Stories of Great Escapes in Nazi Europe

 

Title: Escaping Hitler: Heroic True Stories of Great Escapes in Nazi Europe

Author: Monty Halls

Publisher: Pan

Pp: 307 including bibliography and acknowledgements

Price: £8.99 (paperback)

I've said here before more than once that I have been an avid fan of World War II escape literature since seeing The Great Escape when I was 10 or 11.

This book looks like a cracking addition to the canon. I dipped into it for a quick taste this morning and came across the following advice from MI9, the intelligence organisation established to help would-be and actual escapers.

Do not march in a military fashion, but adopt a tired slouch.

Try and 'collect' a bicycle.

Sling your haversack: French peasants commonly carry one in this way, but never a pack on their backs.

Village priests are likely to be helpful.

Every large animal in Europe is edible.

Some of this advice is obvious. Some is not. The combination of well informed tips and practical help must have been enormously helpful to the people at the sharp end of escaping. Here's a statistic: Germans were of course well aware of the escape ethos, notes the author. They were also aware of the existence of escape aids, in particular maps, 'but evidently not to the extent that they could intercept them as a matter of course. By 1944 they had uncovered nine escape maps, out of a total of 200 originals and 750,000 copies'. 

I thought I might be not so keen on the accounts of following in the footsteps of escapers, but Halls very adroitly mixes the mundanity of the present with the tension of the underlying escapes, as with the escape of Len Harley from Campo 78 in Italy on September 8 1943, bursting out of the camp in the belief that the war was over as a result of the Italian armistice. Much very good writing follows as Len and his fellow escapees spend months making their way through the landscape.

The author is an ex-Royal Marine, marine biologist, documentary broadcaster, expedition leader and writer, his biography at the front of the book explains. What, this writer wonders, does he do in his spare time? 

Seriously, I vaguely remember the Great Escapes series on BBC2. Thanks to the most cursory sampling of this book I'll be hunting it down on the iPlayer and/or YouTube. Any self-respecting fan of the genre will likely do the same.

I'm now going to break my own rule on premature use of the C-word, but as Waitrose is already selling magazines with special seasonal covers, I almost feel justified. If you know someone who likes reading escape literature, you have just found an excellent Christmas present.

 

 

John Law: A Scottish Adventurer of the Eighteenth Century

Title: John Law: A Scottish Adventurer of the Eighteenth Century

Publisher: Maclehose Press

Author: James Buchan

Pp: 534 including index, acknowledgements and author biography

Price: £30

Publication date: September 6 2018

I have read tantalising brief accounts of John Law in a series of books outlining financial history. He could be charitably described as an adventurer (as here), or a buccaneer, even a pioneer in his field for having, according to this book, invented fiat money in France in the 18th century.

In modern parlance amongst the humble Scots who are his counterparts in the 21st, he would be labelled a chancer of the first order, a fly man of the top rank. Even in this sympathetic portrayal the author concedes from the start that over the centuries, Law has been portrayed as a crook, a rake and a madman, but today, observes Buchan, many of his ideas are now the plainest orthodoxy.

The 21 Escapes of Lt Alastair Cram

Title: The 21 Escapes of Lt Alastair Cram

Author: David M Guss

Publisher: Macmillan

Pp: 432 including index

Price: £18.99

When I took my review copy of this book out of the padded envelope my first thought was that looked great. It looked like a real book from a real publisher (no matter how hard non-traditional publishers try, they just do convince the naked eye in the way that the older houses do).

I asked for a copy as I had read a couple of reviews in the weekend press of three or four weeks ago and very much liked the sound of it from those reviews. I was hesitant to start reading for a couple of reasons. One, I was very busy with real work, the kind that pays the bills. Two, I wondered if it might fail to live up to expectations.

Having finally read the author's Preface, I felt I could relax, not least because the author cited The Wooden Horse (the first WWII escape book I read as a child in the late 1960s) and Pat Reid's The Colditz Story (my second). The author then mentioned two other books and authors in the genre that I had never even heard of on the same topic.

George Millar's Horned Pigeon and Jack Pringle's Colditz Last Stop sound intriguing, and are available via Amazon, but at elevated prices that I would find difficult to justify in current economic conditions.

We're off to a good start, I thought, and plunged into the opening chapter, which features Operation Crusader (the British Eighth Army's plan for relieving the garrison at Tobruk), devastating losses, the capture of Lt Cram by a frightened young German soldier, his handover to Italian troops, their attempt to convey him and more than 300 prisoners out of Libya by sea, his escape, his being mistaken for a young Italian woman and pursued by an ardent would-be lover, his escape by climbing up the side of a rocky gorge, close encounters with several helpful Sicilians, their philosophical musings on the nature and purpose of war, theories about sexual repression among Nordic women and the origin of war and his recapture. All between pages nine and 26.

Unusually for a book written by a modern American writer, it is accessible and cracks along at a lively pace.I am hugely looking forward to reading the rest. 

Stand and Deliver!

 

Title: Stand and Deliver! 40 simple steps to successful public speaking

Author: Ian Nichol

Publisher: Matador Publishing

Pp: 528 including index

Price: £12.99

I asked for a review copy of Stand and Deliver because I have a personal interest in the subject of public speaking. It was something I strenuously avoided for decades having made an idiot of myself once or twice at secondary school and never recovered until I discovered a marvellous panacea around July 2004 when I was looking for a way to keep myself occupied of an evening while spending several weeks on a severely restricted diet.

This is not an ad

This is not an advertisement, just a heads-up for anyone who might be suffering from arthritic or rheumatic pain. Just 10 days ago I could barely walk after a week and a half in the steep terrain of Wengen in the Swiss Alps.

On Saturday, a local estate agent with a similar joints issue recommended this gel.

I ordered some that afternoon, it arrived on Monday, and just a few applications later I can walk almost normally. Not quite ready to resume jogging just yet, but hope springs eternal. The agent said that if it didn't help, he would buy it off me as it works for him.

August 19 update: I've now been using the product for a week and it has certainly helped to the extent that I have just ordered two more tubs.

Milk of Paradise: A History of Opium

Milk of Paradise: A History of Opium

By Lucy Inglis

440 pages including notes and index

Published by Picador (hardback £25)

I asked for a review copy of this book because I read a review in a supplement to either The Times or The Sunday Times in late July and it sounded fascinating. And it is, in parts, and worth reading for the very best anecdotes that include St Paul's Cathedral architect Christopher Wren administering the first known transfusion to a dog, a familiar-sounding rant from the 18th century berating the British government for failure to invest in building roads and bridges and other infrastructure and the mention towards the end that some people are now using medication designed to sedate elephants to get high.

To someone who has never consumed a drug stronger than the stuff a pharmacist will sell you in Luxembourg if you ask for the equivalent of Benylin to help deal with the effects of a very bad cold this is literally incredible. Nor did I know that opium poppy was administered as a suppository in ancient times. The author's brief account of the Opium Wars between Britain and China in the mid-19th century is as articulate and informative as any other I've read. I had entirely forgotten, incidentally, that the Opium Wars ultimately derived from the insatiable British appetite for that other well known everyday drug, tea.

Retailer overdrafts jump by a third

Yet more concerning information about the struggling UK retail sector. The value of UK retailers’ overdrafts has jumped by 33% from £8.2bn to £10.9bn in the last year alone, says Hadrian’s Wall Capital (HWC), a London-based specialist debt adviser.

RSRCHXchange adds analyst interaction functionality

As the global market for investment research continues to unbundle post-markets in financial instruments directive II (MiFID II), RSRCHXchange reports that it has built upon its strength as an aggregator and marketplace for written research by adding a suite of functionality for other research services.

From Pillars to Pariahs a good read

Bankers: from Pillars to Pariahs

Author: Ian Peacock

Publisher: Novum Pro

Pp: 132

ISBN:978399064269-6

Further to my earlier interim review of this slim volume, I have to say it is a pretty good and very readable history of the financial industry from the 1950s to today. Despite the continuing sloppiness of editing.

A decent addition to anyone's financial library, even if I can't see a price on it...

 

Bankers: from Pillars to Pariahs

Bankers: from Pillars to Pariahs

Author: Ian Peacock

Publisher: Novum Pro

Pp: 132

ISBN:978399064269-6

I asked for a review copy because I enjoy reading a good financial history, having spent my entire professional life around international financial services in one way or another, and because I had read a positive review in either The Times or The Sunday Times a weekend or so earlier.

ECSDA consults on draft settlement fail framework

The European Central Securities Depositories Association (ECSDA) has now made available the draft version of its future ECSDA Settlement Fail Penalties Framework (the Framework).

Sluggish UK growth to keep Bank of England cautious

UK interest rates are likely to remain unchanged until the autumn as new monthly gross domestic product (GDP) data show a small pick-up in growth, comments Schroders' senior European economist, Azad Zangana.

The Jacobite Rebellion: read all about it

Title: The Jacobite Rebellion

Author: Paul Adams

Publisher: The Book Guild Publishing

Pp: 227

Price: £7.99

ISBN: 978-1-912362-55-4

 

I asked for a review copy of this book because I liked the sound of the basic premise. Charles Edward Stuart is arrested and held by the police on suspicion of terrorism, specifically a threat to overthrow the monarchy and replace the Queen with the real Charles Stuart, a modern day Bonnie Prince Charlie. As a Scot who has lived in England for nearly 40 years, that piqued my interest.

Paul Adams can certainly write light humour, of that there is no doubt, and I say that as someone whose own professional writing life started with gags and sketches for BBC radio and TV. In fact, as I said to the publisher, his style sounds very much in tone like the satire I deployed in my own (so far unpublished) comic novels with an Emergency Holographic Detective (EHD-1) at their core.

I have enjoyed the 50 pages I read yesterday after the book arrived in the morning post and I am looking forward to reading more today, but the half a dozen minor typoes and grammatical errors are irritating and interrupt the reading flow for this linguistic pedant.

As a full-time writer and editor I know how easy it can be for this to happen but if the 1100 or so pages that make up The Lord of the Rings can be proofread properly, so surely can The Jacobite Rebellion.

But that is a quibble; I am enjoying the story and want to read more. That almost literally speaks volumes...

15.27h, July 1 2018...Just finished reading the book. The typoes and grammatical errors irked me to the end, and the humour began to grate about half way through. But I did want to see how it finished, despite the sloppy editing and the contrived jokes. It made a big difference from all the biographies, autobiographies and World War II escape books I've read recently.

Brexit vote two years on: UK economy falters

Schroders senior European economist, Azad Zangana, considers the implications for the UK's economic growth and interest rate prospects. 

The UK economy was supposed to plunge into recession soon after the vote to leave the EU, but the majority of forecasters were wrong. 

After the trade war wobbles

Mint - Blain’s Morning Porridge

The Morning Porridge is unrestricted market commentary freely available to all investors on an unsolicited basis. It is not investment research. 

After the trade war wobbles earlier this week, it feels like we’re on more or less an even keel this morning. What can possibly go wrong next? (Form an orderly queue to the right please..)

Independence is better than meat

Mint - Blain’s Morning Porridge

A free man can live on fish. Independence is better than meat.

The Morning Porridge is unrestricted market commentary freely available to all investors on an unsolicited basis. It is not investment research.

Today, it’s all about Iceland! The giant-killing demi-gods of football slaughtered Argentina in a 1-all draw! [Think Led Zep riff: Da da da dada!] What other mere team can possibly match them? The population of Edinburgh is 100k people bigger than the whole of Iceland! And, since the Icelanders are pretty much Scots according to their DNA, I’m now a fanatical fan!

Of all extinct life-forms

Mint - Blain’s Morning Porridge

Of all extinct life-forms, dinosaurs are the most popular. Why that should be is not clear…

The Morning Porridge is unrestricted market commentary freely available to all investors on an unsolicited basis. It is not investment research. 

All eyes on the US Federal Reserve today. They will hike by 25 basis points to 2 percent – the sixth hike in seven quarters. Slow and gradual.

I wish they wouldn’t land those things here while we’re playing golf....

Mint - Blain’s Morning Porridge

The Morning Porridge is unrestricted market commentary freely available to all investors on an unsolicited basis. It is not investment research. 

What joy to be back at my desk after two weeks sailing round the Atlantic coast of La Belle France.