Did The Government Dither Over Northern Rock?
Sir Nicholas Macpherson was the senior civil servant in the Treasury, when Northern Rock ran into difficulties. He has just appeared before the Treasury Select Committee and there is a report here. This is the first paragraph.
The Treasury’s most senior civil servant has told MPs the government should have been quicker to nationalise Northern Rock following its collapse.
It doesn’t appear to me, that the government appeared to act quickly at all.
Perhaps, Gordon Brown was just being too prudent!
On the other hand, I’ve done financial modelling with loan companies and know that if you decide to run them down collecting all the payments aggressively, you can often retrieve a bad situation.
So perhaps, they were hoping Northern Rock would all come good! It didn’t!
Remember though, the bank did employ a lot of people in Labour’s heartland. So liquidation would have been a bad option for NuLabor.
A Thought About Coeliac Disease
After reading yet again, about a coeliac in hospital, where they really weren’t too professional about what he could eat, I’ve had this thought.
Is coeliac disease the most common disease, that can be cured by diet alone?
To take this further, am I right to think, that this fact gets up the average medic’s craw, as it means the disease can’t be cured by the two most common treatment methods; drugs or surgery?
Europe’s Largest Man-Made Nature Reserve
If you dig a big hole, you get a lot of earth and rubbish to dispose of. CrossRail is digging two of the biggest tunnels in the world and have not only done a proper archaeological job, but have come up with an innovative solution to the spoil disposal. It is being shipped to Wallasea Island to create a whole new nature reserve. There’s a BBC report on the operation here. You can also see CrossRail’s press release, which has a lot of pictures.
Crossrail And The Stepney City Farm
CrossRail is Europe’s largest construction project and the tunnels have a terrible job to squeeze through underneath the City. One problem is where the two eastern branches of the tunnel join under Stepney City Farm. I visited the area in March and described it in this post. It would appear now that the new buildings at the farm have been completed, according to this press release.
CrossRail are now building a large underground cavern to allow the tunnelling machines to pass through and eventually contain the railway junction.
Meeting At Waterloo
In a post a couple of weeks ago, I said that the clock at Waterloo was no longer the meeting place of choice it once was, due to the new balcony with all its shops and cafes. These pictures taken on Sunday, show even less people than the previous post.
The cafes weren’t that busy, but people did seem to be meeting on the balcony.
The Anonymous Widower 