From The Pen Of James-Guy Jacobs

Don't Say A Word

2010-03-25T21:20:00.005Z

An obvious universal truth is that, unless you have divine perspective, you can never see the full story. Here's another unremarkable one. Life is unscripted and therefore inherently unpredictable. This hampers the dubious work of experts and forecasters. However, what always strikes me is how the nature of reality is in such contrast to the vast majortity of films and television series. Once you introduce a script, you normally end up with complete nonsense. It might be greatly enjoyable, well made and beautifully acted nonsense but still very much nonsense.

There are so many perfect examples, it's almost impossible to know where to begin. However, I'm just going to take the last two films I saw on television. The first one is the 2001 film, Don't Say A Word, starring Michael Douglas and Sean Bean which I watched on Film Four last Saturday night. To prove how bad this film is, all I need to tell you is the beginning of the plot. Sean Bean kidnaps Michael Douglas's daughter. Based solely on this information, anyone can easily work out how the film will develop and end.

To prove this theory, I gave my wife the film's tiny summary and this is how the conversation ensued:

WIFE: Right, well, Sean Bean is the baddy and has a silly, Sheffield accent.
ME: Yes
W: Michael Douglas plays a loving father who, against all the odds, out foxes Sean Bean.
M: Yes
W: At the end of the film, Michael Douglas fights it out with Sean Bean.
M: Yes. And?
W: Michael Douglas kills Sean Bean and in the final scene you see Douglas walking off into the sunset holding his daughter.
M: That's it, exactly.

Pathetic, really. Now let's try the same exercise with the 1994 film, The Specialists, which I saw last night, starring James Woods, Sharon Stone and Sylvester Stallone. This film is so predictable that you don't even need a summary. Sly Stallone is obviously the goodie, who kills James Woods, the baddie, at the end of the film and wins the girl, Sharon Stone. The rest, as they say, is mere commentary.

Television series are even more formulaic.

Columbo/Quincy/Magnum/T J Hooker etc always get their man. In soap operas, whenever someone kisses some else at an inappropriate time, someone even more inappropriate will always wander in and the episode will end on a terribly tedious cliffhanger.

To be fair, many books have been written lampooning the essential silliness of films. The writer, Joe Queenan, does it better than most and I would heartily recommend any of his books. The film business is rooted in fantasy and escapism and it's not suprising that the resulting product is generally very silly. However, there are some notable exceptions.

At the same time that Don't Say a Word was on Film Four, Channel Four was screening The Departed which won the Best Picture Oscar in 2006 for the brilliant British producer, Graham King. The film is set in Boston and is about an undercover agent in the Irish Mafia. It was expertly directed by Martin Scorsese and featured a stellar cast including Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Martin Sheen and Mark Wahlberg. Apart from Ray Winstone's laughable American accent, everything about this film is really good but the best thing is that it blurs the traditional goodie and baddie roles and you can never work out how the film will turn out. Indeed, to borrow a cliche, William Monahan's tremendous script packs a real shocker at the end (I won't ruin it for you if you haven't seen it!).

Unfortunately for every Departed, there are a thousand Don't Say a Words, for every Sopranos, a hundred thousand Columbos and for every District 9, a million Avatars. I suppose there's another universal truth in there somewhere. You have to swim through oceans of mediocrity to discover a single gem.

Griffin v Powell

2009-11-01T16:14:00.014Z

In 1987, I made the headlines of the BBC1 9 o'clock news. The occassion was a speaking visit to the Bristol University Student Union by the famed right winger, Enoch Powell which ended in a near riot as students united from all parts of the country to demonstrate against him.

I wasn't a demonstrator. In fact, the only reason I had gone to the Student Union that day was to play table football. When I got to the Union, at around 1pm, the main entrances had been blocked off so, frustrated and confused, I tried to get into the Union through a little known side door. However, the police intervened and escorted me back to the front of the Union.

By this time, the main entrances were becoming increasingly packed with venomous students who were literally baying for Powell's blood. Soon there were so many students, I was swept into the Union and pushed to the edge of the main staircase. For a few more minutes nothing much more happened as the Union became increasingly more noisy and crowded.

Then, suddenly, the whole atmosphere became very much noiser. I've heard 110,000 fans screaming at the Nou Camp stadium, in Barcelona, but that was nothing compared to the decibel level I now encountered. True, a large number of students were screeching and whistling at the top of their vocal range. However, there was something else that's more difficult to describe. Every single student seemed to project the most intense hatred possible and it appeared to massively magnify the sound. In short, it was terrifying.

Then, in the middle of it all, twenty, maybe thirty police officers forced a path open and Enoch Powell appeared in the centre of the pandemonium. Even though he was in his mid seventies, Powell walked fairly quickly and mounted the staircase. I'll never forget his face, it was a picture of absolute, steely determination. For me, it was very hard to reconcile. How on earth could this man be so convinced that he was correct when, without the strong police presence, the masses would have literally torn him to shreds and probably eaten him too, for good measure?

Later that evening, I watched the BBC coverage with my friends. The BBC commentator advised the audience that minutes before Mr Powell turned up, there had been a concerted effort by students to break into the side entrance of the Union to sabotage the talk. The footage then panned to a close up of my bemused face as I was led away by the police.

In fact, this wasn't my first encounter with Enoch Powell, it wasn't even my second. I had already seen him speak twice at my school, University College School, in 1982 and 1984. For the first visit, there was a huge amount of excitement about the forthcoming speaker and I did my homework.

Brigadier Enoch Powell MBE (1912-1998) was born in Stechford, Birmingham. Before turning to politics, he was an academic, linguist, soldier and poet. He became a Conservative MP between 1950 and 1974 and an Ulster Unionist MP between 1974 and 1987. He was controversial throughout much of his career and his tenure in senior office was brief. He had strong, distinctive views on monetary policy, national identity, immigration and United Kingdom's entry into the European Economic Community which later became the European Union. He was dismissed from the Shadow Cabinet for his controversial and widely remembered 1968 "Rivers of Blood" speech in opposition to mass Commonwealth immigration to Britain.

Although I immediately found Powell's views on immigration to be very offensive, I was fascinated by how incredibly clever he was. Whilst at Trinity College, Cambridge University, in one Greek prose examination lasting three hours, he was asked to translate a passage into Greek. Powell walked out after one and a half hours, having produced translations in the styles of Plato and Thucydides. For his efforts, he was awarded a double starred first in Latin and Greek and then become a Professor of Greek at Sydney University, aged only 25.

Watching Enoch Powell speak for the first time was an extraordinary experience. I was only 15 and it became seared in my memory. Powell was famed for his oratorical brilliance and I was hypnotised by him. He spoke without notes, never pausing once and seemed to possess endless knowledge and intelligence. I have subsequently seen many famous politicians and statesmen speak and - apart from Margaret Thatcher - there really was no one in his league.

Interestingly, when he gave his infamous "Rivers of Blood" speech, it caused very little reaction among his audience. It was only after the speech was publicised and scrutinised, that it caused such intense outrage. I'm sure the reason was that Powell mesmerised his audience in the same way that he held me as a teenager.

Powell spoke again a couple of years later at my school in a debate with the then headmaster, Giles Slaughter. I thought Mr Slaughter was very brave to take on Enoch Powell and indeed he did credibly well but Powell was once again as brilliant as he was two years ago.

The angry scenes I encountered outside the Bristol University Union in 1987 were repeated a couple of weeks ago outside the BBC Television studio in White City at the notorious Question Time featuring Nick Griffin. Indeed, during the Question Time itself, Jack Straw referred several times to Enoch Powell and the "Rivers of Blood" speech.

To my mind, there are one or two interesting comparisons between Griffin and Powell. Nick Griffin holds shameful and disgusting views but he is also a clever man. He went to Downing College, Cambridge University but - unlike Powell - only succeeded in obtaining a Lower Second in Law. Whilst a student, his affiliation with the National Front was revealed during a Cambridge Union debate and his photograph was published in a student newspaper. Undeterred he later founded the Young National Front Student Organisation.

Both Powell and Griffin were strongly rumoured to have had homosexual encounters. According to John Evans, Chaplain of Trinity and Extra Preacher to the Queen, instructions were left with him to reveal after Powell's death that at least one of the romantic affairs of his life had been homosexual. However, Powell's biographer, Simon Heffner, disputed this and argued that this did not mean Powell was homosexual but rather that he had not yet met any girls.

Meanwhile, Griffin, at the age of 16, was reported to have stayed at the home of National Front organiser, Ian Webster. Webster was openly gay and in a four page leaflet written in 1999 claimed to have had a homosexual relationship with Griffin, then the BNP's publicity director. Griffin has denied any such relationship.

However, there are many more contrasts than comparisons. Powell could have obtained real power had he not so spectacularly blown his chances in 1968 and then left the Conservative Party in 1974. Indeed, he might well have won the leadership of the Conservative Party in 1975, instead of Mrs Thatcher. As mentioned, he was an exceptionally clever man and it is a shame that his peculiar views led his career down a darker path.

Meanwhile, as Question Time demonstrated, Griffin is a fairly poor public speaker, a bore and a bigot of the worst sort. His views are significantly more extreme than Powell's ever were, despite his farcical attempts to make the BNP more respectable. For example, Powell was never a Holocaust denier. Indeed, at the age of 70, he learnt Hebrew, his 12th and final language.

Griffin will never remotely attain Powell's achievements. Powell was a prolific writer and an accomplished poet. He had many talents beyond politics and even appeared in the BBC's 2002 100 Greatest Britons of all Time (voted for by the public).

Griffin - for his part - will, hopefully, one day be consigned to the dustbin of anonymity. The sooner, the better, frankly.

LDJ

2009-10-06T18:11:00.009+01:00

My dad, Laurance David Jacobs, died on the 25 May 2009, aged 72. The problem with death is that words are inadequate tools to describe the devastation of bereavement and that little phrase, in itself, is a hackneyed old cliche.

Despite saying that, a possible way of conveying the experience is by means of historical anology. At the moment, I'm reading Richard Rhodes' 1987 Pulitzer Prize winning account of the making of the atomic bomb. As everyone knows, the atomic bomb resulted in the tremendous destruction at Hirsohima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Here is the account in Wikipedia of the Japanese realisation of the bombing of Hiroshima:

Military bases repeatedly tried to call the Army Control Station in Hiroshima. The complete silence from that city puzzled the men at headquarters; they knew that no large enemy raid had occurred and that no sizeable store of explosives was in Hiroshima at that time. A young officer of the Japanese General Staff was instructed to fly immediately to Hiroshima, to land, survey the damage, and return to Tokyo with reliable information for the staff. It was generally felt at headquarters that nothing serious had taken place and that the explosion was just a rumor.
The staff officer went to the airport and took off for the southwest. After flying for about three hours, while still nearly one hundred miles (160 km) from Hiroshima, he and his pilot saw a great cloud of smoke from the bomb. In the bright afternoon, the remains of Hiroshima were burning. Their plane soon reached the city, around which they circled in disbelief. A great scar on the land still burning and covered by a heavy cloud of smoke was all that was left.

I remember my dad telling me, when I was a child, that at the end of the World War 2, the Americans dropped a bomb on a Japanese city that was so powerful it immediately killed 60,000 people. I recall struggling with the magnitude of this fact, I just couldn't believe that humans could be so clever and so immensely destructive at the same time.

How did that Japanese staff officer feel when he first realised that a major city had been wiped out in an instant? It was completely without precedent, entirely different from anything experienced before. But that it what the loss of a parent is to you, something that is so outside the bounds of your life experience, that you struggle for days and months to just try and make sense of what has happened. Most often, you can't.

I'm not yet ready to eulogise properly about my father in writing, either in this blog or anywhere else. However, I would like to just share another initial realisation - my first awareness that my dad had a brain that was superior to just about anyone else I've ever met.

I always knew that my dad was incredibly clever. The house was full of unintelligible books and even as a little kid I was dead proud that my dad had come from a very humble background to win scholarships to Cambridge and Harvard and then become - of all things - a nuclear physicist. But it only really struck home the day I decided to test my dad's vocabulary.

Around 1978, when I was 11 years old, my dad bought a slim book called Test Your Wordpower. The book comprised of a prologue followed by 50 tests. In each test, there were 60 words divided into 6 levels of 10 words. Level 1 contained really easy words like dog, cat, house etc. Then the levels increased in difficulty until you got Level 6 which was made up the words which were punted around in a gameshow like Call My Bluff.

The prologue helpfully told you there was a huge correllation between your vocabulary and your IQ. Basically, the smarter you were, the more words you knew. The majority of the adult population ended up in Level 3. If you found yourself in Level 4, you probably had a very decent job. If you landed in Level 5, you were probably a top professional or heading in that direction. Level 6 meant you were very flipping sharp.

I kept taking the tests and usually scraped into Level 3. (Rather irritatingly, I took the test a few months ago and still scraped into Level 3 which shows how little I've learnt in the last 30 years!) My mum comfortably made Level 4 and then, one day, I decided to see what my dad would score. Incredibly, it turned out, that my dad could define every single word in the book.

I was always trying to catch my dad out by hauling in the family's immense English dictionary and checking his definitions but I never tripped him up, ever. He could always define the word thrown at him and it just staggered me. The prologue didn't tell you what kind of person could score full marks on every test but I had a pretty good idea!

Of course my dad was infinitely more than a walking dictionary, he was an absolutely unique and brilliant individual. However, as I said, this blog is not a eulogy just a few random thoughts and memories.

The Evasive Deal

2009-03-01T13:06:00.008Z

At the moment, there's a tiresome email doing the rounds inviting you to a barbecue party. You've probably all seen it before. The email attaches a powerpoint presentation. When you click onto it, it supplies details of the party - a vision of paradise complete with a tropical island, beautiful companions and the finest luxuries. At the end of the presentation, you are asked whether you would like to accept the invite. There are two icons, "yes" and "no". Of course, you immediately try to click onto the "yes" icon but - surprise, surprise - it runs away from the cursor! The more your cursor pursues the icon, the faster the icon flees your cursor.

So basically you shake your head. It's just a dumb email, after all - right?

As a god forsaken commercial property solicitor, I am regularly sent details of off market properties which I then forward onto clients and contacts. These deals always promise huge finders fees and massive incentives. For example, last week I was sent information relating to a confidential £140 million development site in Central London promising a 2% finders fee (£2.8 million) if the deal could be successfully placed and completed. According to the details, it wasn't going to be too difficult as the developers were in administration and would take an enormous discount if necessary. The redevelopment value was estimated to be in excess of a billion pounds.

However, as I've found out, there are several problems with these deals and most of these problems reflect the current state of the economy.

1. The deal either doesn't exist or exists in a completely differently form to what is being touted. Frequently, this is because proprietors or their agents leak information into the public domain solely to ascertain what the true market value of their properties are. They usually have no intention of selling the properties and will always insist the properties were put on the market without their authority. However, the reality is quite different.

The best example of this is Northern Rock who at the end of last year knowingly released details of over 1,200 repossessed properties in order to obtain their current market price. The resulting scandal made the headlines of the Mail on Sunday and Northern Rock were extremely quick to maintain that the properties were not for sale and they had no idea the information had been released. The truth was by the time they issued their denial they had received all the information they required about the value and demand for their remortgage portfolio!

2. If the deal does exist, there will be a myriad of ignorant intermediaries and agents to overcome before you can actually get to the proprietor or the genuine controller of the deal. This is because the original information will have been been relayed to numerous agents and solicitors who will ultimately demand their finder's cut should the transaction ever complete. The process inevitably creates hideous chinese whispers so a £1m residential property development in Coventry may become a £12m commercial development in Central London by the time you receive it. If that isn't bad enough, the whole property market is currently swamped by paranoia, distrust, fear and greed. Unless you are dealing directly with original parties, the prevailing commercial atmosphere will drag you down. Supposedly off market and confidential properties have sometimes done the rounds for many months and will be flung around the market like a syphilitic whore.

3. If you can obtain an offer from an interested party, it will nearly always be rejected as being too low. Sellers are still woefully naive, or willfully ignorant, as to the current condition of the market which resembles a hedgehog that has been crushed by a line of several hundred tanks. In contrast, cash rich purchasers (there are no other types for the time being) are rare and highly valued. Unlike oppressed sellers, these purchasers are acutely aware of current market conditions and will have been wooed endlessly. When they make their precious cash offers, they will demand their pound of flesh and sellers will find their ruthless offers exceptionally difficult to stomach.

4. If, miraculously, a deal is agreed, it will inevitably collapse as sellers will become convinced that they have been cheated and purchasers will keep chipping the purchase price as the market continues to sink like a stone.

This is Brown's Britain in 2009 and it shows no signs of improving. It is just as well that our Prime Minister has only one functioning eye. With two eyes, he would behold the true state of the economy and the hideousness of his claim to have abolished boom and bust in 2007.

Peaches beats recession woes

2009-02-10T21:36:00.007Z

On Saturday evening, I caught sight of the front page of the International Herald Tribune and it struck me again how quickly the world economy is deteriorating. Last month, over 600,000 people lost their jobs in the United States. This equals the carnage suffered by American workers at the height of the Depression in the 1930's. I skimmed through the article which finished with the now obligatory reminder that there was no end in sight to the current problems and they were expected to get much worse.

In fact , it seems that any report that contains a bad set of statistics invariably compounds the unwelcome news with some sort of arbitrary forecast that in a few months or years, the terrible figures are expected to double or treble or whatever negative equation takes your fancy.

I then went out to Golders Green in North London for a meal with my wife. But wherever you go you can't escape the unmistakable signs of the current recession. I quickly noticed that within a few yards of our restaurant, bailiffs had forced the closure of three other restaurants and a bar. Then while we were eating our meal, I couldn't help overhearing a number of people bemoaning the loss of their jobs or businesses. The evidence of deprivation and anxiety appears universal.

Finally, we got home and I checked the BBC News website. The headlines under the Main News (as well as the Entertainment) section was that Bob Geldof's teenage daughter, Peaches, had split up with her husband after six months of marriage. Ranking below this news in importance, were the terrible bush fires in Australia.

I scratched my head and asked the obvious question. Why did the BBC think this bit of worthless gossip was so important? Either they genuinely believed that their world audience gave a rat's buttocks about Geldof's child, or, alternatively, they thought this mindless bit of drivel would somehow distract people from the severity of the global recession.

I have no idea but clearly the BBC moves in mysterious ways.

Good Riddance to 2008

2008-12-31T17:26:00.003Z

Characteristically, a very difficult year has finished on two low points.

Firstly, at midday, the FTSE closed at 4,434 points, compared with 6,457 points a year earlier. This marked a record fall of 31.3% and reflected what the BBC called the "financial brutality" of the previous 12 months. Everyone has rushed to get their tuppence predictions in for what next year holds. Of course, no one knows but the universal feeling is that things are about to get a whole lot worse.

Seventy years ago, George Orwell wrote "Coming Up for Air" and accurately predicted not just World War II but the entire transformation of the society that succeeded the war. As I've mentioned in previous blogs, predictions do occassionally hit the mark but the vast majority of forecasts should be treated with scepticism, especially from the "experts". Remember, no one holds the proverbial crystal ball.

Secondly, Israel is again at war and so far it largely appears to be a repeat of the conflict against Hezbollah in 2006. Once more, we see Israel suffering continous provocation from a neighbouring terrorist organisation, Israel responding with its military might against an enemy that hides amongst the civilian population, Israel criticised worldwide for its "disproportionate" response and an outbreak of sympathy for Hamas. Meanwhile, yet again, for all its technological know-how and intelligence, Israel fails to quell the rocket attacks and hesitates over whether to send in ground forces. If 2006 plays itself out again, then Israel will fail to stop the rockets, fail to remove Hamas and hand them a public relations victory. I can only hope that Israel has learnt some lessons from two years ago.

Despite all the indications, I truly hope 2009 proves to be a much more favourable year for everyone.

The Train Journey and Class of RY

2008-12-20T23:45:00.006Z

Between 1978 and 1985, I went to University College, a public school located in the heart of Hampstead.

In September 1981, at the age of 14, I began the class of RY. Confusingly, this stood for Remove Yates. This did not denote a pressure group or political campaign of any type, rather the Remove year (public school jargon for Year/Grade 10) of Mr Yates, our form teacher.

There were about 25 boys in the class and in the previous year we had been called EY, which stood for Entry Yates. (Years 11 and 12 were respectively called Upper Remove and Transitus!) One of our first collective discoveries, as RY, was that our charismatic English teacher, Mr Ronnie Landau, had been replaced by a Mrs Mary Read (soon to be nicknamed Hairy Mary).

Mrs Read’s first English essay assignment for the class was to describe a train journey and she gave us a couple of days to complete this task. The results were very interesting and gave an accurate snapshot of the type of class I was in.

The first category of pupils had no imagination at all. They observed the world scientifically and empirically. These pupils literally described their train journey to school. So, for example, their essays would be along the lines of, “... at around 8am I get to Golders Green Station. The train travels for about a minute before entering a tunnel and then after another couple of minutes, we get to Hampstead station...”

The second category of pupils had some imagination but not very much. Their essays described journeys in France, travelling through the countryside or along the coast.

Then, in the next category, you had the pupils, like me, with the strange imagination who had already read too many books. I described being an 8 year old child being rounded up and forced into an extremely crowded cattle truck, alongside my family, with only a tiny crack to peer out of. I detailed how, during the tortously long journey, people died of thirst around me and how screaming guards with machine guns and snarling Alsatian dogs greeted our arrival as we were all bundled off to the gas chambers.

(Incidentally, I got a B for this essay, with the comment: “good, vivid description and use of imagination. Well done!”)

Finally, there was the Jonny Zucker category. This category surprising only contained one pupil, my old friend, Jonny Zucker and was in a league of its own. Zucker wrote about a young man who got onto a train at his usual local stop. As the train journeyed, the man gradually aged and he watched all the main events of history unfold outside the windows. He saw the great world wars, the assassination of Kennedy and so forth. Then the train moved into the future as the man continued to age. He observed the nuclear holocaust and Armageddon caused by the final world war and then the train reached its destination, the burning fires of hell.

Zucker rightfully obtained a straight A for this and Mrs Read admitted she was dazzled by his ability. These days, he is a successful children’s author.

Class RY also produced Adam Lent, Rabbi Gideon Sylvester, Dr James Hyman and Sam Bourne/Jonathan Freedland all published, well respected writers and thinkers.

A Great Idea

2008-12-20T21:44:00.005Z

What do you do if you are running a newspaper and there is a comparatively quiet day, a tiny lull from the ever plummeting sterling and ever deepening recession? Well, here’s a great idea. Why not create some further bad news? Everyone likes bad news, right? And the country can always do with some more.

But how can you manufacture a bad story, run it on your front page and give everyone a headache in the process? Easy, take some high sounding fool in a suit and ask him to predict that things will actually get much worse. Predictions aren’t lies, exactly; they are a good honest stab at the truth. It doesn’t matter that the so called experts have a terrible track record and couldn’t predict a sandstorm in the desert. If it comes true, the expert can be treated as a quasi-divine sage, if it proves hopelessly amiss, well, most likely everyone will have forgotten the original prediction anyway.

I love it! But who do we use? Well, which area has consistently got their predictions wrong and proved utterly inept at managing risk? Hmm, what with politicians, bankers, economists, and financial regulators, there’s quite a large selection. Yes, it’s a tough one. But let’s go with a very senior banker, preferably one with a tie, waistcoat and glasses so everyone takes him more seriously.

He can spout the usual rubbish about house prices falling between 15% and 30% in the next couple of years. I mean with that margin of error he’s bound to be somewhere within the ball park. Then let’s all get very upset about his prediction and talk about it all the time and forget that, in fact, it’s only a silly forecast from someone who has no more (in fact, probably less) idea than you and me.

Ah, this is fantastic! But who can we use? Who, indeed? Wait, what about that bloke, John Varley, the Chief Executive of Barclays? Ok, Barclays invests much less in property than the other high street banks and so he doesn’t exactly know what he’s talking about. But never mind that. Do you think he’ll do it? Somebody, make the call...

Charlie Parker

2008-11-26T23:08:00.006Z

In my last year at University, I became obsessed with Charlie “Bird” Parker, the enormously influential jazz musician.

Parker was an American saxophonist and composer. He was born in Kansas City in 1920 and died in the Stanhope Hotel, New York in 1955, aged only 34. Such was his fame and reputation, that only a few hours after his death, a giant graffiti “Bird Lives” appeared in the New York subways. He had abused his body with drugs and alcohol to such an extent that the coroner mistakenly estimated his body to be between 50 and 60 years old.

Parker was a leading developer of bebop which was characterised by a blistering pace, virtuoso improvisation and technique built on harmonic structures. Many of his tracks became standards such as “Anthropology,” “Billy’s Bounce” and “Now Is the Time.” He introduced revolutionary harmonic ideas including a tonal vocabulary employing 9ths, 11ths and 13ths of chords, rapidly implied passing chords, and new variants of altered chords and chord substitutions. His tone was clean and penetrating, but sweet and plaintive on ballads. Parker was also a consummate blues player and could fuse jazz with other styles from Latin music to classical. In his day, he was so admired by other musicians that they shamelessly copied him. After his death, his numerous recordings blazed paths that were followed by others.

Parker also became an icon for the hipster subculture and later the Beat generation, personifying the conception of the jazz musician as an uncompromising artist and intellectual, rather than just a popular entertainer.

A huge amount has been written about Parker and he was the subject of the acclaimed 1988 film, Bird, directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Forest Whittaker. My father bought me arguably the best book about Parker called The Triumph of Charlie Parker by Gary Giddins (first published in 1987 by Hodder & Stoughton). It’s superbly written, full of wonderful photographs and a book I still treasure today.

However, the purpose of this blog is not to provide a biographical account of Parker’s life but to give you a slight favour of Bird’s genius by means of a few contemporary and personal anecdotes. Of course, it goes without saying that the best way to appreciate Parker is to listen to his music. Any “Best of” collection will do!

In 1937, Parker joined a band led by a pianist called Jay McShann. Bird rehearsed relentlessly (15 hours a day for 3 to 4 years) and became so good that his colleagues could only marvel at his talent. They were amused, too, by how fast his mind worked, as he imitated sounds echoing in from the street – engines, backfiring tires, auto horns – and worked them into musical phrases. He also learnt the trick of quoting melodies that had lyrical relevance to the moment. He might nod to a woman in blue with a snippet of “Alice Blue Gown,” or to woman in red with “The Lady in Red,” or comment on a woman headed to the ladies’ room with “I Know Where You’re Going.”

Later in his career, Parker became friendly with another musician called Buddy De Franco. When interviewed by Gary Giddins, De Franco recalled a young tenor saxophonist who challenged Bird on a track called “All the Things You Are.” Parker welcomed him to the stand, counted off the number and played in a key that nobody played. “The kid was devastated and Bird could do that to anybody. He taught me that trick of playing in all the keys, because it forces you away from your basic patterns – from what we call fail-safe jazz.”

Parker’s conversation with De Franco often turned to the great Russian composer, Prokofiev, since Bird knew Prokofiev was his favourite composer.

“Every time he’d get a new recording of Prokofiev, he’d say let’s go to my place and listen. He knew about so many things. We were in New York in the winter, working some concert together, and we’d been up all night. It was snowing, freezing cold, and I wanted to get back to the hotel and sleep, but we passed the Salvation Army band, and he says, “Wait a minute, let me hear this.” I can’t believe this is Charlie Parker standing in the snow listening to this horrible band – I missed whatever cues he found in there. Finally, I said, “OK, I’ll catch you later.” It wasn’t until next spring that I got a job on Fifty-Second Street. He was playing at another club and I go down during my breaks to hear him. The first time I walked in I sat very close to the stage; he gave me a little nod, pointed his sax at me, and played one of those pieces from the Salvation Army.”

In 1982, at the age of 15, I bought a used tenor saxophone, mainly because Marilyn Monroe said in Billy Wilder’s classic 1959 film, Some Like It Hot, that she always fell for the tenor sax players. However, I always found the tenor too heavy and in 1987, I switched to the smaller alto and started to practise compulsively. I also played the clarinet up to Grade 8 standard and this gave me an advantage.

There was one book I was desperate to buy but it was so popular that it was very difficult to obtain. Finally, in 1988, I was able to swap a load of records for what saxophonists reverentially called The Bible. This was a yellow book called the “Charlie Parker Omnibook” that transcribed Parker’s recorded solos exactly.

I remember how excited I was when I took my alto out of its case and leafed through the well worn pages of The Bible for the first time. I settled on “Ornithology” which is one of Parker’s most famous tracks. I stumbled slowly and awkwardly through Parker’s solo and then played it again and again. It was incredibly difficult to play but worse was to come. Once I’d played it numerous times, I listened to Parker’s original recording through my Walkman headphones and tried to keep up on my alto. Bird played the solo flawlessly about ten times faster than me and it was just impossible for me to maintain his pace.

At that point, I made a decision. Come what may, I would learn to play Ornithology at its proper speed and without a mistake. I thought it would take me a few days to do this. In fact, it took me three weeks of hard practise (at least two hours a day, every day) and even then I still sounded nothing like Parker. Meanwhile, the more I practised, the more I was filled with awe and admiration for Bird.

Once I’d finally got the hang of “Ornithology”, I moved on to another famous number, “Koko”. This was even faster and more complicated and it took me months to play it at the correct speed. Parker was a maestro and a genius and trying to emulate him only reinforced this. It was a truly humbling experience.

Eventually, I gave up trying to play Parker, it was just too damn hard but I still listen to his recordings all the time. And each time I hear a track, I hear something new.

Bird lives!

The Credit Crunch & The Jews

2008-11-23T18:57:00.007Z

On the 12 May, 1866, the leading article of The Times reported breathlessly that in the City, “a tumult became a riot.....as a mob besieged the most respectable banking houses...making the narrow thoroughfare of Lombard Street impassable.” What was later termed The Great Panic of 1866 was caused by the crash of Overend, Gurney & Company, a London wholesale discount bank, known as "the bankers' bank", which collapsed owing about 11 million pounds sterling ($1.3 billion at 2007 prices).

This was the third British banking crisis of the nineteenth century. The first crisis was in 1825 and caused by a severe stock market crash which led to numerous banks failing, nearly including the Bank of England.

However, the Panic of 1866 was to form a notable watershed. There was not to be another banking run until September 2007. Northern Rock, one of the top five mortgage lenders in the United Kingdom, sought and received a liquidity support facility from the Bank of England following emerging difficulties in the credit markets. When this was reported, customer confidence in the Bank vanished and this led to the incredible spectacle, on 14 September 2007, of many customers queuing outside branches to withdraw their savings. On 22 February 2008, the Bank was taken into state ownership.

The run on Northern Rock marked the beginning of the credit crunch in the United Kingdom. Simply defined, this is the ongoing financial crisis triggered by the significant decline in housing prices and related mortgage payment delinquencies and foreclosures in the United States. The resulting ripple across the financial markets and global banking systems has caused a severe decline in overall liquidity as financial institutions have tightened their lending practices.

Although numerous forecasts have been made in the British media and elsewhere, as to how much worse things will get, the truth is no one knows. However, nearly all forecasters are agreed on one fundamental issue, it will get much worse before it gets better.

Last week, a series of grim predictions were made. The United Kingdom would see over three million unemployed within two years and London would be worst affected with at least 650,000 out of work. Meanwhile, the British stock market has continued to drop to 1997 levels, with no sign of improvement. Whilst property prices and general business confidence are in freefall, the number of foreclosures and insolvencies are increasing rapidly.

The Jewish community is by no means immune to the financial crisis and there is a very palpable concern. My father, a retired university lecturer, watched the anxious customers outside the Northern Rock Savings Bank in the Golders Green Road and was startled by what he saw. “I recognised several of them – many were wearing kippot. They were only able to withdraw money after about seven hours of waiting.” Others thought they were cleverer; their cash was earning nearly 7% in two Icelandic banks. However, they did not escape either. In October 2008, the British Government effectively bankrupted Kaupthing and Her Majesty’s Treasury froze the assets of Landsbanki. Confidence in all banks has continued to plummet and it was reported recently that there is now a shortage of £50 notes as people begin to hoard them.

At the other end of the wealth scale, the various Jewish masters of the financial universe have been reduced from being billionaires to mere millionaires or even worse. The favourite dinner party topic is no longer the price of your house but whether a particular individual can hang on to his or her job. Anyone connected to the Financial Services industry is racked by profound angst and disbelief. This is all true of the general population but probably more so among the United Kingdom’s Jewish inhabitants.

For anyone working in property, the world is a frightening and unpredictable place. Andrew, a 41 year old surveyor, living in Edgware, North London, captured the mood accurately. “Many surveyors have lost their jobs. Those who have not face worry and uncertainty. I meet estate agents every day who say they will run out of money by the end of the year if things don't pick up. Every time I return to an area I haven't visited for a while, another estate agent has closed. Everyone in our community is anxious. We are in a prosperous area, but so many jobs and companies are dependent on property or investments. The younger families inevitably have larger mortgages and are having to cut their expenditure. Many people are worried about the cost of holidays to Israel and with the lack of spare cash and poor exchange rate; many will be not be holidaying abroad next year.”

At Jewish Care’s Employment Resource Centre, in Finchley, North London, the picture is no less grim. Alan Sanders, a consultant and member of the Jewish Care executive, reported that the number of unemployed Jewish people seeking assistance had increased by over 50% since the previous year. “It’s been right across the board from recent graduates to experienced professionals.”

Nevertheless, Paul Edlin, the vice president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, was slightly more upbeat. “The British Jewish community has not really been affected by the financial crisis, although some retired individuals or couples have had their savings threatened. However, matters looks like they will become worse in the next three months. No one knows where this is heading.”

Indeed, a few days ago, British Jewish leaders warned that the worsening economy could lead to a rise in antisemitism and increased support for the extreme right wing organisation, the British National Party. Henry Grunwald, Chairman of the Jewish Leadership Council said: "We're already seeing and hearing things about who is responsible for the economic downturn and we know from history that when there are economic problems, there has always been an increase in antisemitism."

It would appear that, in the United Kingdom, worrying times are here to stay, as we venture into the unknown.

The Men Who Got It Right

2008-11-02T12:50:00.007Z

On the 1 January 1962, The Beatles spent just under an hour auditioning for Mike Smith, a producer at Decca Records at their studios in West Hampstead, North London. They performed 15 songs chosen by their manager, Brian Epstein, designed to showcase several Lennon/McCartney originals along with assorted cover versions they had performed live in a number of venues over the years.

In what is considered one of the biggest mistakes ever made in history, Decca Records rejected The Beatles, several weeks later, on the basis that “guitar groups are on the way out”. Decca therefore compounded a hideous commercial error with a notoriously inaccurate prediction.

It is easy to laugh, with the pleasure of hindsight, at the numerous terrible predictions made throughout history. What is more difficult is to recognise and applaud the tiny minority of forecasters that got it right, sometimes repeatedly so. History’s most famous example is Winston Churchill, who warned as early as 1932 of the acute dangers of allowing Germany to rearm. In response to Neville Chamberlain’s infamous 1938 Munich prediction that it was “peace in our time”, Churchill responded to him bluntly: “You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour and you will have war.”

Only two wise men accurately predicted the Credit Crunch and the inevitable ensuing recession.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the cult author of Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan, scathingly attacked the risk-management models used in the financial world and beyond, in his books. He argued that these models took no account of “Black Swans” - rare, high impact events, known in quantitative finance as “fat tails”.

In The Black Swan, Taleb wrote, “The government-sponsored institution Fannie Mae, when I look at the risks, seems to be sitting on a barrel of dynamite, vulnerable to the slightest hiccup.” Globalization, he noted, “creates interlocking fragility.” He warned that while the growth of giant banks gives the appearance of stability, in reality it increases the risk of a systemic collapse – “when one fails, they all fail.”

On October 14, 2008, Bloomberg announced that investors advised by Taleb had gained 50% or more this year as his strategies for navigating big swings in share prices paid off amid the worst stock market in seven decades. In an interview, on the same day, Taleb said, “I am very sad to be vindicated. I don’t care about the money. I’m proud I protected my investors.” Taleb also said that the current crisis was a “White Swan” not a “Black Swan” because it was something bound to happen.

Even more remarkable, were the uncannily accurate predictions of Fred Harrison, a Director of Economic Indicator Services (UK). Harrison began his career as an investigative reporter and comprehensively studied economic patterns over the previous 400 years. In 1983, he published The Power of Land which reviewed detailed historical evidence for four countries: the USA, Japan, UK and Australia. He was drawn to a chilling conclusion. The boom and bust business cycle repeated itself every 18 years. This meant that if the patterns of history were to continue, the global economy that had recovered from the slump in 1974 would survive for 18 years before “tail-spinning into yet another deep-seated depression of even greater magnitude”.

In his compelling book, Boom Bust, published in 2005, Harrison wrote: “The lessons of history appeared stark and inevitable to me: a global slump in 1992. In April 1983, I submitted warning memoranda to the UK Treasury, and alerted the public in an economic bulletin. The mandarins in Whitehall were not willing to listen. Neither was Margaret Thatcher’s Tory party. In 1996, I repeated that warning for the benefit of Tony Blair’s party. The warning was also ignored by the shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown.”

In Boom Bust, Harrison accurately predicted that house prices would peak in August 2007 when the peak ratio of house prices to earning would be 6.5. He forecast that this would be followed by massive slump in house prices, an unparalleled crisis in the financial markets culminating in a bitter depression in 2010. However, not all is lost; the housing market will peak again in 2025.

Footballing Wisdom

2008-10-12T18:19:00.005+01:00

If a football team starts playing badly, the away fans sometimes begin a chant which builds in volume: “you don’t know what you’re doing! You don’t know what you’re doing!”

So after a truly terrible week on the markets, I would sing:

To Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson:
“You don’t know what you’re doing!”

To George W Bush and the leaders of the Western World:
“You don’t know what you’re doing!”

To any idiot politician that thinks making reassuring noises will help buck the market:
“You don’t know what you’re doing.”

To the City regulator, the Financial Services Authority, who say they have no plans to crack down on bankers’ bonuses:
“You don’t know you’re doing!”

To anyone that thinks that it’s sensible to dump shares whatever the cost and hang the consequences:
“You don’t know what you’re doing!”

To all the charities, councils and hospices that invested in Icelandic bank accounts:
“You don’t know what you’re doing!”

To the whole rotten Icelandic financial system:
“You don’t know what you’re doing.”

To every bank that now finds itself in terrible trouble because it believed it could sensibly manage risk:
“You don’t know what you’re doing.”

To anyone who thinks they have any clue where any of this is heading or makes confident predictions:
“You don’t know what you’re doing.”

And to everyone:
“We don’t know where we’re going!!”

How To Get Rich

2008-10-05T23:08:00.009+01:00

Early last Friday, I was pacing about in the bookshop at Luton Airport, waiting for my mate, Jonny to appear, en route to a weekend break in Barcelona. A weekend break really does mean a break – from everything. It’s a chance to get out of the capital of Rat Race and chill by a pool, eat food, eat more food and.....read. However, crucial to this plan of action is an enjoyable book and so as I paced, I searched the shelves of the airport’s bookshop for something suitable.

What I was hoping was for a book to beckon me like a shining light, something compelling and intriguing, literally begging to be read. Unfortunately, my luck was clearly shot because absolutely every single book in that shop looked to be a piece of trash – and not good trash but bad, boring, life wasting dross. I simply couldn’t find anything interesting and by the time my long suffering pal had located me, I was beginning to panic. Screw the credit crunch; I couldn’t sit on a Barcelona hotel sun terrace just picking my nose and belching. My mind needed to be gainfully occupied.

As the plane was about to leave and Jonny was very hungry indeed, he displayed little patience for my dithering. He quickly surveyed the cramped shelves, snatched a book down and made me pay for it. It was decisive action. We rapidly grabbed a couple of smoked salmon sandwiches from Pret a Manky and boarded the Easy Jet plane to Barcelona.

Now, I could very easily write a couple of blogs explaining how flipping difficult it is for a six foot seven inch, 250 pound man to get on a tiny Easy Jet plane and the supreme grovelling skills required to get decent seat. But I’m not going to do that right now, dear reader. I’d like to discuss the book I’d bought.

You see, my buddy and I were in such a damn rush to get fed and boarded, I hadn’t actually checked what book he’d forced me to buy. When I finally did manage to sneak a peak, I saw that it was How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis.

The book, published in 2006, describes Dennis as a poet, publisher and planter of trees. His Wikipedia entry also describes him as a philanthropist and the first man to say the “c word” on television (on a live 1970 edition of David Frost’s The Frost Programme). The Sunday Times Rich List 2007 ranked him joint 95th with a fortune estimated at £750 million. This is serious wealth. He is also described as dividing his time between homes in Mustique, New York, and Britain.

When I asked Jonny why he made me buy a book with such an embarrassing title, he replied that Dennis was a “geezer” and worth paying attention to.

Ordinarily, I never would buy a book like this. I don’t, as a rule, like self-help books which I think, in attempting to appeal to a mass audience cannot simultaneously deal with the intricacies and complexities of each individual reader. In particular, I have little time for the numerous get rich publications. I just assume they are published to make an already financially successful author, even more financially successful.

Like many things in life, I think the ability to make large sums of money is something you either have or don’t. You can’t for example buy a book to teach you how to be witty, you either are or you aren’t. A book can divulge academic knowledge or it can entertain you or it can make you look at things from an entirely different perspective but it cannot change who you are genetically. That’s nature, or if you like, God’s job.

Having said all that, I didn’t have anything else to read so I gave it a go. At this point, I have to say thank you to my canny friend who I suspect knew exactly what he was doing.

How to Get Rich is a very interesting book, extremely frankly and entertainingly written. Unlike Richard Branson, Dennis is an entrepreneur who started in the early 1970’s with absolutely nothing and proceeded to make, as well as spend, hundreds of millions of pounds. Why is it so interesting?

Well, firstly, how many people do you know who have made (or spent) that kind of money? Not alot, I bet. (Funnily enough because of my profession, I know a few, including one or two billionaires but I’ll come to that in a minute). The book distills 40 years of learned wisdom into 300 compelling pages.

Secondly, it clearly demonstrates the mindset you have to adopt if you genuinely want riches (which Dennis defines as a minimum of £15m to £40m). This has to be a combination of an absolutely focused determination (to the exclusion of virtually everything else, including sometimes health and relationships), a crocodile thick skin together with – incredibly – the wisdom that the accumulation of immense wealth is just a game, chum.

Dennis agrees that this type of steely personal trait is partially genetic but believes that making money is a knack that you can acquire.

The book is full of valuable lessons including (to name just a few) always retain ownership, delegate cleverly, recruit young talent, toady to greed and watch overhead. Dennis teaches how to learn from failure and retain your wealth, once finally achieved. He also says that extremely few people get rich through having a great idea or just being lucky. To quote that terrible cliché: it's one percent inspiration and ninety nine percent perspiration.

To paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby, the very rich are different to you and me. Of course, this does not mean that they are physiologically different from the rest of mankind. However, one thing I have noticed about the financially blessed is that they have an innate confidence which can be observed no matter whether they were born rich, inherited it or aquired it through their own efforts.

By the way, Barcelona was truly wonderful. I think it’s the most beautiful city in the world and even more enjoyable when you have the company of a good book.

I Predict More Predictions

2008-10-01T21:50:00.009+01:00

If you’re not well, one of the first things you'll want to know is when will I get better? It's human nature to ask how long your suffering will continue and when respite will eventually arrive. To get an accurate answer, you can ask a friend or relative who has experienced something similar. Or if it’s a more unusual condition, you are entitled to ask a doctor, search the internet or read a medical book. You can also seek a second or third opinion, or pay a fortune to a specialist.

But what if the truth is no one knows. Are you happy to be fobbed off or accept the discomfort of uncertainty?

Whenever you ask someone for a forecast, you are making a fundamental assumption that they know something you don’t. They have superior knowledge, or intellect, or expertise or machinery that allows them to analyse a bunch of possibly complex factors, or variables and then make a prediction. However, an assumption is a terribly dangerous thing. During the Vietnam War, a sign was kept nailed above a particular marine commander’s desk which said: “Assumption is the mother of all f***-ups.” Those seven words should be nailed above the desk of every Prime Minister and President of the United States, especially now.

A fortnight ago, I was watching BBC24. A Wall Street financial analyst was asked to comment on the latest bit of terrible news to hit the markets. He did a proficient job before being asked “and how much longer will this all go on for?” Without any hesitation, the analyst gave some half spun yarn about matters getting worse before they got better and concluded everything would be fine within the next couple of years. I shook my head. To be fair to the BBC interviewer, he was, as noted above, merely seeking respite to an ever worsening financial situation. And, while we’re at it, in fairness, the Wall Street analyst is a highly paid talking head whose business is to provide economic forecasts. But his business is a foolhardy and arrogant one. For the truthful answer to the interviewer’s final question was, “I’m afraid I don’t have a clue” Unpalatable but true.

A few weeks ago, my September 12 blog “Thoughts on Eastenders and the Credit Crisis” was considered for publication by the Legal Gazette. However, the editorial team wanted the following removed:

“Expert” predictions in newspapers are ten a penny and usually completely worthless. The truth is absolutely no one knows how long this unholy mess will drag on for. Indeed, for all we know, it could continue for at least another decade. Accurate forecasts are virtually impossible due to the complexity of the issues involved and the consistent possibility of unforeseen random events that can powerfully affect the economy.”

It is fairly obvious why they found this paragraph distasteful. Newspapers, magazines and documentaries thrive on “expert” predictions, notwithstanding the fact that the vast majority of “experts” could not predict a snowstorm in the Arctic. (However, I should add, another professional journal, Estates Review, agreed to publish the article in full.)

Interestingly, the Council of Mortgage Lenders finally became aware of the sheer uselessness of making housing predictions after all their forecasts were rapidly disproved. Finally and incredibly, on the 24 September, they admitted that house price predictions were “futile”.

Let’s be clear, there are some things that can be predicted in newspapers – they are good at getting cinema and theatre viewing times correct. But social, economic and housing matters, to name just a few, are complex and variable fields and no mortal can accurately foretell their long term future. How many people predicted 9/ll, the First World War, 1987 Black Monday, or even the rise of the personal computer and internet? Extremely few.

The credit crunch is a crisis that continues to unfold rapidly but no one knows where it will lead or when it will be resolved. Let us have some humility and accept this. For all we know, the crisis could lead to world war, another holocaust, the destruction of capitalism or the coming of the Messiah. We don’t know. We just don’t. But there is one thing I can confidently predict – more predictions.

On Meeting a Real Life Politician

2008-09-21T11:29:00.000+01:00

Last week I had the slightly dubious privilege of seeing the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling give a twenty minute presentation at the Anglo-Israel Chamber of Commerce, followed by a ten minute question and answer session. The event was held at Bloomberg’s spectacular building in Finsbury Square in the City and – just, in case I might have forgotten - the prominence of the guest speaker was driven sharply home by the hordes of waiting paparazzi camped patiently on the Bloomberg steps at 7.30am. Not only that, the anxious faces of virtually every worker I saw in the Square Mile, reminded me of the particularly troubled times we are all experiencing.

Several minutes later, I was seated, surrounded by several hundred fellow invitees, awaiting the Chancellor’s address. Now, before I tell you about that, I want to pause a second and relate what my impression of the Chancellor was up until that point i.e. until I saw him “in real life”. Like, I dare say, the vast majority of people in this country, I perceived the Chancellor to be a weak, incompetent man, bullied by the Prime Minister and completely unable to deal with his political remit. I also thought he was a peculiar looking individual with his shock of white hair and black eyebrows.

However, the “reality” was somewhat different. I still think the Chancellor looks a bit strange but he came across as very warm, witty and – dare I say it – competent. Although he didn’t say anything new, his address, which was given without notes, was flawless and he handled all the questions thrown at him with total efficiency. After the address, everyone around me was saying the same thing. How could the Chancellor’s “real” personality be so at odds with his media image?

Almost eighteen months ago, I had a very similar experience. The politician in question was also the Chancellor of the Exchequer. But it was a Chancellor on the verge of becoming a Prime Minister. Gordon Brown was the special guest of Henry Grunwald, the President of the British Board of Deputies of British Jews at their annual dinner. I was able to speak briefly to Mr Brown, who was extremely warm and charming and the then-Chancellor’s ensuing address was both humorous and profound.

Again, up until the time I experienced the “real” Gordon Brown, I had always perceived him to be dour, humourless and rather unpleasant. The contrast was remarkable.

But why is it remarkable? Logic dictates that to attain the highest echelons of political power, you have to be a very impressive individual. But maybe the underlying truth is that we live in a society that is deeply cynical about the integrity and competence of its politicians and this reflects itself in a media, dominated by short sound bites and scathing columnists. Either that or underneath their superficial charm and sincerity, top politicians are merely clueless, self-serving egotists.

Meanwhile, I have still not met anyone who has a kind word to say about Harriet Harman but please correct me if I’m wrong!

Thoughts on Eastenders and the Credit Crunch

2008-09-12T19:31:00.000+01:00

As I was watching television the other day, it occurred to me that there was one part of the United Kingdom which had been completely unaffected by the Credit Crunch. In this place, the two vexed words had never ever been mentioned, let alone caused difficulties. Where was this utopian land which had so entirely shrugged off the economic hardships plaguing the rest of the country? None other than Eastenders’ “keeping it real” Walford.

It’s amusing to speculate what could have happened in Walford in the last year should the tedious scriptwriters been given a free hand to reflect the economic reality. There might have been a run on the Walford Bank; Bradley Branning’s former boss, the admirably complacent housing developer, would have been made redundant after a monumental drop in her company’s share prices, repossessions in Walford would have dramatically increased, Walford market would have suffered a sharp downturn in business and – well, anyway, you get the idea.

From a jobbing commercial property solicitor’s point of view, such stories are all too familiar. The main problem for my clients, who are in any way reliant on finance, is that the banks have not only metaphorically shut up shop but also gone away on indefinite leave without leaving a forwarding address. I can imagine, in a few months time, lawyers reflecting on the good old days when banks used to issue “offers” as opposing to folding or desperately trying to offload huge amounts of debt for a fraction of their value.

Those clients who have long excellent standing relationships with their banks, may find their bank’s lending criteria change bewilderingly on a weekly basis or they may discover that previously reliable lines of credit simply discontinued. Theoretically, this means that cash rich investors are in a good predicament if they want to pick up cheap deals. However, although there is certainly some truth to this, it is not necessarily always the case.

A seller will not wish to be saddled with negative equity and so their asking price will be above their mortgage redemption value. Frequently, this figure will be substantially above current market value. Indeed, I have personally seen this happen time and time again. The seller is then forced to just “tough it out” and hope that the market will turn shortly. But will it?

According to Newton’s laws of gravity, what goes up must surely come down. But if you flip this on its head, does what goes down surely come up?

Generally accepted wisdom is that things will continue to get worse for another couple of years before starting to improve. But this may be akin to the historic prediction that the First World War would be over by Christmas.

“Expert” predictions in newspapers are ten a penny and usually completely worthless. The truth is absolutely no one knows how long this unholy mess will drag on for. Indeed, for all we know, it could continue for at least another decade. Accurate forecasts are virtually impossible due to the complexity of the issues involved and the consistent possibility of unforeseen random events that can powerfully affect the economy. The later factor has been termed the “Black Swan” by Naseem Nicholas Taleeb who has repeatedly shown, in his book of the same name, how unforeseeable events, such as war or 9/11 can have extremely wide-ranging economic consequences

However, one indicator is worth paying attention to: the stock market. In his fascinating book “Wealth, War and Wisdom” published by Hoboken this year, Barton Biggs showed the “wisdom of the market” was repeatedly proved during the Second World War. Financial markets aggregate the knowledge and expectations of their multitude of participants and have an uncanny way of “knowing” what the future holds. In retrospect, one can often look at a chart of broad-market indices and see that the market “called” important turning points by putting in a long term bottom or top, even when those turning points were perceived by few.

For example, in the United States, the Dow Jones Industrial Average declined throughout 1941 as the threat of war increased, fell further after Pearl Harbour and the fall of the Philippines, but put in all-time bottom at the same time as the Battle of Midway which, in retrospect (but crucially not at the time), was seen as the key inflection point of the Pacific War. Even though the U.S. was also at war with Germany and Italy but had not engaged either in a land battle, the market somehow still “knew” that whatever the sacrifices to come, the darkest days were behind.

Notwithstanding all the caveats above, there is a good argument to be optimistic as to the long-term future. If the population continues to increase, there may be a resulting shortage of properties and this can only ultimately force prices up. Furthermore, there is a generally an upward trend in the value of properties in prime areas. Indeed, “trophy” properties are nearly always resilient in a poor economic climate.

The current situation is not particularly helped by the government response. Increasing the stamp duty nil-rate band by £50,000 is largely cosmetic and will have minimal effect in effect in London. It may have more effect outside London but sensible residential purchasers are far more likely to adopt a “wait and see” attitude.

It is worth recalling that the previous stamp duty holiday brought in by John Major’s government for the first eight months of 1992 completely backfired. The threshold for stamp duty was raised from £30,000 to £250,000 (plenty of money in those days!). However, as UK property consultant King Sturges said the effect was “a sharp temporary squeeze in the time taken to complete the average sale as buyers rushed in to complete before the holiday ended.” Prices actually fell in 1992 by 8.3% - the single biggest annual decline in prices ever recorded – and transactions were lower at any other time in the last 34 years at 1.1m.

However, the Government “free” five-year loans opens up an opportunity for potentially lucrative private investment. This is reminiscent of the opportunities produced by the Conservatives’ “right to buy” schemes in the 1980s.

As almost every newspaper headline will remind you, we are living in a difficult, unpredictable era. However, remember, those who bought property in the darkest days of 1992 and then kept that property would have been wealthy fifteen years later. Similar opportunities are arising again for those with foresight and a little courage. Now, what time is Eastenders on?