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Could Lehman’s Dick Fuld end up behind bars?
Mar 12th
What should be the fate of Lehman Brothers’ chief executive, Dick Fuld? After this week’s 2,200-page potboiler from the bankruptcy courts, one former Lehman banker has an uncompromising opinion.
“I think this is gross negligence of the highest order and I want to see people behind bars,” says Larry McDonald, a former Lehman vice-president whose book, ‘a colossal failure of common sense‘ chronicled the bank’s collapse.
Some 18 months after Lehman’s demise, anger is still raw among the bank’s former employees towards the “31st floor” which housed the executive suites of top management.
“On the trading floor, most people were making money in bonds, currencies, commodities,” says McDonald, who says thousands of careers and pensions imploded when the bank went bust. “People lost millions and millions and millions of dollars overnight. Most people want jail time – and not just for Fuld.”
The court-appointed examiner mandated to scrutinise Lehman’s collapse, Anton Valukas, concluded in his report that there were grounds for “colorable claims” against Fuld, the bank’s auditor Ernst & Young and three successive chief financial officers – Chris O’Meara, Erin Callan and Ian Lowitt – for presenting a misleading picture of Lehman’s finances in its accounts. A series of temporary asset sales under a trick known as “repo 105″ artificially bolstered Lehman’s balance sheet to the tune of $50bn.
Like few other financiers, Fuld, 63, has become a lightening rod for public outrage over the credit crunch. The man once nicknamed the “gorilla” for his pugnacious style was memorably named last year as the worst American chief executive of all time by Portfolio magazine, which said he had remained “belligerent and unrepentant” since Lehman’s demise. During a Congressional probe into the bank’s failure, Fuld offered little apology, preferring to express outrage that the government declined to bail out his firm – he said he would wonder “until the day they put me in the ground” why taxpayers did not come to Lehman’s rescue.
For the bank’s final full year of existence, 2007, Fuld received $22m in remuneration. Since Lehman’s demise, he’s been working for a new firm, Matrix Advisers, and he spends spare time at a country home in the backwoods of Idaho. When a Reuters reporter tackled him in September, he delivered a self-pitying lament about his unfair treatment.
“They’re looking for someone to dump on right now and that’s me,” said Fuld. “You know what they say? This too shall pass.”
Fuld’s response to this week’s report by the bankruptcy court has been a shrug of the shoulders. A statement from his lawyer, Patricia Hynes, asserts that he did not know of the bank’s Repo 105 transactions that papered over financial cracks: “Mr Fuld did not know what those transactions were – he didn’t structure or negotiate them, nor was he aware of the accounting treatment.”
That’s a big declaration – since Fuld’s long-serving right-hand man, chief operating officer Bart McDade, says he recalls discussing it with the CEO. In an interview on January 28 with the examiner, McDade is quoted as saying: “Fuld knew about the accounting of Repo 105.”
The department of justice’s success rate in Wall Street convictions over the financial crisis has been poor. One high-profile prosecution against two Bear Stearns hedge fund managers, Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin, ended in abject failure in November, when a jury decided that incompetence and mismanagement didn’t amount to a crime.
Experts say that for all the public appetite for charges, it could be tough to make them stick. Jacob Frenkel, a former SEC enforcement lawyer now at the Washington law firm Shulman Rogers, says the examiner’s language was careful: “What I found striking is that even when Valukas’s language was tough, it didn’t venture into the arena of fraud. He talks about gross negligence, which isn’t criminal, and he talks about materially misleading – but he notably avoids the word ‘false’.”
In other words, the “I knew nothing about it” defence might just work – even for the man in the corner office during the most notorious Wall Street banking collapse since the Great Depression.
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Nick Clegg addresses the dreaded hung parliament issue
Mar 12th
Liberal Democrat leader discusses how he will decide the identity of the next prime minister
Along with Allegra Stratton, I have conducted an interview with Nick Clegg on many trains and phones. Givien his ubiquitous media presence ahead of his Spring conference – and why not – it was going to be hard for us to crack open some new ground.
The media are inevitably obsessed with what he will do in the event of a hung parliament, an issue that has killed off previous Liberal Democrat election campaigns. He has rehearsed his lines well enough, but we may have made some progress on one intriguing issue.
The Liberal Democrats are touchingly still democratic, and have since a conference in Southport in 1998 an agreed procedure for how its leadership should consult its membership on what it shoud do in the event of a hung parliament, including whether to hold a special conference.
Asked whether he would stick to the procedures agreed by the party at Southport, Clegg tried to reassure Lib Dems by saying:
This is not an issue of procedures. Any leader worth their salt would make sure that they take their party with them.
But Southport set out an agreed procedure known as the triple lock. The motion passed read:
In the event of any substantial proposal which could affect the Party’s independence of political action, the consent will be required of a majority of members of the Parliamentary Party in the House of Commons and the Federal Executive; and,
(ii) unless there is a three-quarters majority of each group in favour of the proposals, the consent of the majority of those present and voting at a Special Conference and,
(iii) unless there is a two-thirds majority of those present and voting at that Conference in favour of the proposals, the consent of a majority of all members of the Party voting in the ballot.
Figures inside the party such as Lord Rennard, the former campaign supremo, can recite this text in their sleep.
It means if three quarters of MPs and the Federal Executive support a deal with another party, Clegg is free to strike that deal. If the support falls below that threshold then the proposal goes to the conference, and finally if necessary to an all memberhip ballot.
One of Clegg’s aides suggests it means that if the party was to go for full blown coalition – highly unlikely – this procedure would be invoked. It is less clear if Clegg and his team wanted to back a Queen’s speech or an emergency budget. Would such a move affect the party’s independence of political action? The Clegg team say this is not yet resolved.
So the prospect rears of Sterling fall though the floor as the party gathers in a seaside town this May to decide the fate of the nation.
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Protect the drug giants’ patents – and harm the health of the poor?
Mar 12th
India has become “the pharmacy of the world”, home to dozens of generic copycat drug companies that have been producing expensive medicines at dirt-cheap prices that the poorest countries can afford. Famously, Mumbai-based Cipla forced down the prices of Aids drugs some years ago with the launch of a twice a day pill, which then became the staple treatment in many sub-Saharan countries.
But Medecins sans Frontieres, also known as Doctors without Borders, which played a role in that epic turnaround, is now warning that a Free Trade Agreement between the EU and India could ensure that sort of Robin Hood episode never happens again. Yesterday, its supporters demonstrated in New Delhi. They fear the EU, negotiating behind closed doors, will push or cajole India into recognising tough new intellectual property rights. The winners, it fears, will be Big Pharma, while the losers will be the impoverished sick.
This was Loon Gangte, president of the Delhi Network of Positive People (DNP+):
We are marching to call on the Indian government not to trade away our lives. Lifelong treatment for people living with HIV depends on continued access to newer AIDS medicines. Because of international trade rules that India has already signed in the past, some of our newer AIDS medicines are already patented and completely unaffordable. We are protesting against India’s accepting terms that would further compromise access to life-saving medicine.
This is a complicated issue, which is why it gets little attention in the mainstream press. Trade rules and agreements are tough going for any but the dedicated and the nerdy. But essentially, for some years now Big Pharma has been trying to use its influence over politicians in the US and in Europe (who don’t want to lose the investment, jobs and taxes that drug companies bring at home) to demand tighter rules on the Indian copycats. Patents normally last for 20 years, so drug companies can recoup the millions they spend on R&D. They want India to observe their patents, just as Europe and the US do.
India gets cheaper drugs if the generic whizzkids can knock off copycat versions of the blockbusters. While India is middle-income and getting richer, unfortunately a tough trade agreement with the EU would probably penalise the Indian poor. But it also threatens the poorest of the poor, in Africa and other parts of Asia. Look in an African health centre and all the drugs are Indian-made. With a growing need for new and better HIV drugs in sub-Saharan countries, it may be no time to curb the Indian generic manufacturers.
Meanwhile the lobbying for more money for HIV/Aids moved seamlessly this week from London to Washington, where Dr Peter Mugyenyi, director and founder of Uganda’s Joint Clinical Research Center, gave evidence on the Hill. The Center is the biggest implementer of Pepfar (the president’s emergency plan for Aids relief) funds in East Africa and Mugyenyi was one of a handful of people in the room when Pepfar was conceived in 2003. He says that cuts in US funds for Aids are already beginning to bite. This is what he told me:
I’m panicking about it. That’s how bad it is because I’m foreseeing the return of the catastrophic times of the 90s, when everything in Africa came to a standstill and the hospitals couldn’t function and the staff fled the health service – and many of them died. They couldn’t get access to treatment and had nothing to offer their patients. The patients were abandoning the health facilities and flocking to witch doctors and traditional healers who were clearly helpless.
Could we go back there? Mugyenyi says he is already seeing people with newly-diagnosed HIV turned away from clinics as the orders are given only to carry on treating those already on the drugs. The money has been frozen, he says. And yet only 4 million are on treatment and 10 million need to be – and the WHO’s new guidelines say people with HIV should be treated earlier, which would perhaps double the numbers who should be getting drugs.
Read also Chris Collins of the Foundation for Aids Research in the Huffington Post on the hearings in the House and Senate over the Aids budget.
But good news from the Commission on Narcotic Drugs meeting in Vienna this week. After years of blocking resolutions to encourage access to clean needles to protect drug users from HIV, the Obama administration made a break with the past. This was the verdict of Professor Gerry Stimson, Executive Director of the International Harm Reduction Association:
Real progress was made here this week in Vienna – some countries that in the past tried to obstruct resolutions dealing with harm reduction and human rights have backed off. The big – and welcome – development is the US position. The fresh approach of the Obama administration to the UN and to international drug and HIV/AIDS policy is making itself felt. US officials here for the first time were able to voice their support for HIV-related risk prevention measures, and for HIV prevention firmly based in human rights. Let’s hope this continues to play through in the years ahead – if so we are going in the direction of a more rational global response to drug-related harm.
So all eyes are now on Russia, where 65% of HIV infections come from injecting drug users, and which turns a blind eye.
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News Corporation bid rumour lifts BSkyB shares by 5%
Mar 12th
BSkyB was in demand as speculation ran round the market that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation wanted to take the satellite broadcaster private.
News Corporation owns just over 39% of BSkyB and analysts said it would cost around £9bn – including debt – to buy the rest of the business at the rumoured price of 735p a share.
Neither company would comment on what was termed “talk in the marketplace”, and many traders dismissed the tale as “a bit of Friday fun.” However BSkyB’s shares ended 28.5p higher at 598p with 21m shares traded, substantially above the recent daily average of around 4m. The 5% rise made the company the biggest riser in the leading index. Analyst Paul Richards at Numis said the story was plausible:
Sky has invested very heavily over the last few years, in broadband and high definition. It is just on the verge of starting to benefit from this. There should be a material increase in profits over the next two years, but the market is not convinced of this so the shares have been held back.
In terms of timing it would make sense to do it now, if News Corp wanted to do it. The question is, do they? It would cost around £7.5bn – or £9bn including debt – but it could have earnings of £1.5bn-£2bn in a couple of years. So you can certainly see the attraction. Another thing to bear in mind is that News Corp would be using dollars to bid, so given the weakness of the pound you could see why it would stack up.
However we have heard stories like this before in the past, when Sky’s shares were weak or when credit was readily available.
In fact BSkyB was one of a number of companies subject to takeover gossip, a trend which dealers said was an unmistakable sign of a bull market.
Among the mid-caps Game Group gained 3.05p to 88.95p on talk of interest from US rival GameStop, while Bovis Homes, 12.8p better at 405.5p, was the day’s supposed target for rival housebuilder Persimmon, up 8p at 444.7p. Just a day earlier Barratt Developments, 2.4p higher at 126.9p, was said to be in Persimmon’s sights.
Software group Aveva added 33p to £11.50 as Goldman Sachs issued a buy note, in which among other things it said the company could be appealing to a possible predator. The bank said Aveva could command a price of anywhere between £12.58 and £27.02 a share, based on previous takeovers in the sector. Goldman said:
We reiterate our conviction buy on Aveva shares and continue to view the company as a structural winner in the European software sector due to its exposure to key global growth themes of high exposure to infrastructure build in the fast growing emerging markets, increasing share of offshore versus onshore development in the oil and gas industry and renewed investments in nuclear power both in the developed and emerging world. The stock trades at a significant discount (20%-40%) to its peer group despite better expected top-line growth, operating margins and cash returns and hence we believe it is undervalued at current levels.
In our view, Aveva is a premier strategic asset in the software sector that could appeal to a potential acquirer.
It named a list of possible buyers, including Dassault Systemes, Autodesk, SAP, Oracle and IBM, or even industrial players such as Areva and Siemens.
Overall the FTSE 100 finished 8.39 points higher at 5625.65, but it came off its best levels as disappointing US consumer confidence figures outweighed better than expected American high street sales. Nick Serff, market analyst at City Index, said:
The markets have had a very choppy day with some quite sharp moves after US retail sales figures and Michigan consumer sentiment both managed to delight and alarm all in the space of 90 minutes. The sharp equity moves as a result emphasises how sensitive investors are to economic data right now.
Banks were among the leading risers, after investors warmed to their US peers on hopes that President Obama’s plans to restructure the sector would be watered down. Royal Bank of Scotland rose 2.02p to 42.57p, while Lloyds Banking Group ended 1.93p higher at 58.47p and Barclays was 8.1p better at 351.85p.
But HSBC fell 10.6p to 684p following news of a data theft at its Swiss private bank affecting 24,000 clients. As a result Fitch placed the Swiss bank on a negative rating watch. The ratings agency said the move reflected the problem was “a serious operational incident which could potentially have reputational repercussions for HSBC’s private banking franchise.”
Insurer Resolution was the biggest faller in the FTSE 100, down 1.15p to 72.45p. The company learnt this week that it was losing its place in the leading index, to be replaced by specialist banking group Investec, steady at 530p.
British Gas-owner Centrica closed 1p better at 290p after it held an investment day for institutions and analysts.
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Cycling and safety: some top comments
Mar 12th
My latest for Cif went live this morning. It’s about Boris’s Cycle Safety Plan and the majority of commenters have, all too predictably, been ignorant and boring Boris trolls. However, there were welcome exceptions. I thought some of their contributions deserved highlighting here. Here’s one from Constituent:
In Copenhagen, many roads have cycle lanes between the pavement and the road itself, higher than the road, lower than the pavement. These can be blocked by pedestrians when buses arrive at bus stops, and conversely I’ve seen pavements blocked by parked cycles, forcing pedestrians to use the cycle lanes.
Here, a bit of paint isn’t going to help much, unless we are talking about replacing the red and yellow lines telling you where you can’t park your car with green lines showing where you can park. The target should be for no one to go into London without having off-street parking arranged.
As things start, the biggest problem for cyclists is parked cars, and there’s a strong argument for more multi storey parking towers all over the place, perhaps with a café on the top where you can enjoy the view. Local residents currently using street parking in trafficked areas could rent spaces in the towers at greatly reduced rates.
And from Laurie1984:
Most of the traffic nowadays in central London is white vans, black cabs and lorrys. Very few ‘normal’ motorists drive into central London, as they have enough sense to not even try. Van drivers and cabbies depend on getting from A to B quickly for their livelihoods, and so make the more dangerous drivers. In my entirely anecdotal experience of a pedestrian in central London, it’s the cabbies and van drivers who seem to regularly try and kill me. Find a way to make them more careful drivers and I’ll start cycling. (In fact, use the carrot approach – convince them by driving safer, more people will cycle, thereby freeing up the roads for them to get around quicker).
This struck a chord with the reverent:
I have to agree with Laurie1984 above that there is a big problem with commercial vehicles in central London. Delivery van and private hire cars seem to be driven particually badly. With the delivery van they are often hardly full (when I’ve seem them open) so this could be done with far fewer vans, or even some delivery bikes. Private hire cars need much better regulation, as TfL give them a badge for the back of the car but won’t do anything about their driving afterwards.
I write having almost been wiped out by a Addison Lee car this morning on Threadneedle St as he was trying to get the red light first. He then tried to run the cyclist behind me into the pavement on Bishopsgate (who had some words at the next set of light).
Earlier, thereverent had observed of Boris’s approach:
[There] are some steps in the right direction, but still far too little. I still think that when transport planners re-design roads they only look at the car and bus point of view. This is why you get one-way systems with no cycle provision (when one could be easily put in) or a really poor one (Vauxhall). Or cycle lanes which either disappear, have bus shelters or other obstructions in them, and then throw you back on the road at a dangerous point. Certainly some of the roads in London that have tried to get two narrow lanes should be only one lane. Some driver re-education about Advanced Stop Lanes (ASLs) is needed.
Two small steps to make the superhighway much better would be:
- Ensure none of the cycle highway was part of a car lane (which some of it in the youtube clip). This might mean making some double lane roads single lane.
- Provide traffic light which have cycle-only phases allowing cyclist to get clear of the traffic (particularly left-turning traffic).
Thanks for all these comments and also to everyone who contributed so thoughtfully here and here and here earlier this week. This is the Mayor’s “year of cycling”. There’s lots to talk about. Keep the useful comments coming and have a collision-free weekend.
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Your 10 questions for would-be MPs | Henry Porter
Mar 12th
As we prepare to elect the MPs who should safeguard our rights, what 10 questions on liberty would you put to party candidates?
In about eight weeks’ time we will be voting not just for a new government, but a new parliament of representatives, in whose hands will lie the future of our free society.
We want your help to draft a list of questions that can be put to all the candidates of the major parties to establish their credentials, not as party creatures, but as individuals of conscience who will stand for the values of a liberal and democratic society before any other political interest.
The dying parliament is among the worst in the past 100 years – corrupt, lazy, arrogant and dismissive of the public – but it also contained some good MPs who fought the tide of illiberal legislation and who are aware of the direction Britain has taken under Labour’s authoritarian government. We need many more like them to reassert parliament’s power and to hold the executive to account.
Ten key questions on liberty, rights and democracy is what we want you to be able to ask candidates with a view to getting their pledge of support on the record for all voters to see. Where support is not forthcoming, that should be made public.
Where do we start?
At an event last night to celebrate the launch of Keith Ewing’s book, The Bonfire of the Liberties – now the definitive text on Labour government’s attack on liberty and rights – we listened to a young man named Cerie Bullivant talking about his experience of being subject to the restrictions of a control order for two years without having been found guilty of a crime, or being allowed to know the evidence against him. The system of control orders seems to me one of the worst examples of arbitrary state power in modern Britain. I would ask – will you condemn house arrest of a person who has not been found guilty of a crime in a normal court of law?
Are you worried about trade union rights – the right of workers not to be catalogued on secret databases and blacklists, which affect their ability to gain work? What about the rights to assembly and free protest without being harassed and photographed by our militarised police? Last night we heard from Pennie Quinton and Marc Vallée, who have been prevented by police from carrying out their duties as working photographers. Their stories are part of an important battle over the control and regulation of public space. Should we ask all candidates to declare the commitment to the principle that anyone should be allowed to make an image in a public place without being questioned by the police, PCSOs or the numerous varieties of accredited busybodies?
Each year a very large number of innocent people are stopped and searched by the police who, according to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission report, exhibit obvious racism by picking on black and Asian people. One question might be, “Do you support a repeal of current legislation which allows police to stop and search hundreds of thousands of innocent people without having reasonable cause? And do you condemn the racist bias in stop and search policies, as well as the police national DNA database?
We should attempt to get the assurance of candidates that they will do everything they can to roll back the database state. ID cards and government policies to capture all our communications data and all personal details when we travel abroad are being rolled out. The government is putting pressure on NHS patients to allow their medical records to be uploaded to a database, which many experts believe is innately insecure. Records of all children in England and Wales are being compulsorily uploaded to the Contact database. You may feel strongly about these databases or about the Vetting and Barring Scheme, which some see as one of the symbols of a country that is fast losing the reflexive presumption of innocence. What question would encourage a candidate to explicitly reject the culture of suspicion and mistrust that has grown up in the last 12 years?
One worry is the way demonstrations are being oppressed by hostile police who have little regard for the right of people to engage in legitimate political protest and do everything in their power to photograph individuals for their secret databases. Another concern is the use of the Ripa laws and the growth of invasive databases, some of which have no basis in law – the police ANPR surveillance system, for instance, which captures and retains most vehicle journeys in the UK.
Or you may feel that you want to hear more general declarations about candidates’ fundamental political beliefs, principles they are prepared to sign up to and against which their voting record may be measured. My co-director of the Convention on Modern Liberty, Anthony Barnett, suggests that every candidate is asked to explicitly recognise that the threat to our liberty currently posed by government is greater than that presented by terrorism.
Over to you.
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Tory rivals Andy Coulson and Steve Hilton move in together
Mar 12th
Party’s communication chief and director of strategy demonstrate Conservative unity by sharing an office at party HQ
Love, it would appear, is breaking out at Conservative Campaign HQ. Andy Coulson, the party’s communications chief, and Steve Hilton, its director of strategy, are now sharing the same office at the party’s HQ on Millbank.
The Coulson-Hilton love-in is designed, no doubt, to scotch rumours of a clash between the two figures at the top of the party. The news that the “yin and yang” of the Tory campaign are sharing an office is disclosed today by Tim Montgomerie, the founder and editor of ConservativeHome. Montgomerie writes:
Steve Hilton, director of strategy, and Andy Coulson, director of communications, are now sharing an office at the heart of operations. The two men have taken over the third floor’s last available meeting room and now sit opposite each other. This uniting of the party’s yin and yang is the beginning of a big effort to ensure better communication of the party’s strategy.
Coulson, the Essex boy who became editor of the News of the World, and Hilton, who has been the brains behind the detoxification of the Tory brand, are said to have differed over election strategy. The two men have always been on friendly personal terms. But Coulson was said to favour a harder edge while Hilton wanted to focus on a sunnier, optimistic message of the future in the mould of Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” theme.
Montgomerie, whose blog has been picked up by Paul Waugh, blames the party’s recent wobble on confusion over its approach to the economy:
Part of the explanation for the party’s difficult few weeks has been confusion as to the Tory approach to the economy (the election’s No 1 issue according to Stephan Shakespeare). Newspapers have concluded that the party is less hawkish on the deficit and this has fed Labour’s narrative that the election is about strong Brown v wobbly Cameron. Over coming weeks there will be a concerted campaign to ensure there is no doubt, in the minds of journalists as well as voters, that the Conservatives are the party of deficit reduction while Labour are the party that got us into this mess. Cameron will be presented as the straight-talker to the nation. Brown as the leader who borrowed too much, who has wasted taxpayers’ money and who failed to regulate the banks.
Coulson and Hilton will report to George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, who is now focused on his main job for the next two months: Tory campaign co-ordinator. Osborne was given a kicking this week by Le Monde, the main voice of the French establishment, which said of him:
He has been chancellor of the exchequer in David Cameron’s shadow cabinet for nearly five years but George Osborne has still not managed to convince people that he has the gravitas of a chancellor of the exchequer. His youthful demeanour and his lack of experience are apparent on the face of this 38 year old aristocrat.
The article in Le Monde reflects unease in Paris at the way in which the Tories cut themselves off from the mainstream centre right in the EU by leaving the EPP-ED group in the European parliament. Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, made clear his irritation during his visit to London today which included a meeting with Cameron. Expressing “regret” at the Tory decision to leave the EPP, Sarkozy said at a Downing Street press conference with Gordon Brown:
I remained convinced that the position of our British friends is bang in the middle of Europe. We need you.
Judging by pronouncements by William Hague in the FT this week, the Tories intend to accept that invitation. Hague said the Tories have made a “strategic decision” not to pick a fight with Europe.
If Cameron is not careful he may find himself in the same position as Angela Merkel. The German chancellor’s staff had, at one point, to ask the Élysée if the president could be slightly less tactile.
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Pink Floyd’s legal victory over EMI is a triumph for artistic integrity
Mar 12th
The prog-rock band’s court win against their record label is a vindication of the album as a creative format
They don’t often look cheery in photos – and at least two of them can barely stand to be in the same room – but Pink Floyd have a lot to celebrate. The prog-rock legends won a pivotal victory against record company EMI over the sale of their own music. Basically, EMI wanted to make their classic concept albums available to download as individual songs. The band, however, prefer their albums to be downloaded as they were made: in their entirety, as complete musical works. And the judge agreed with Floyd.
At first glance, their motivation seems a little pretentious, recalling a time when supergroups like Led Zeppelin only released albums because they were serious artists and above all that pop stuff, man. However, Floyd’s victory is more than just musical snobbery: it’s a triumph for artistic integrity.
Michelangelo wouldn’t have wanted his Sistine Chapel ceiling to be chiselled into bits and flogged to individual buyers, so why should the same fate happen to Floyd’s painstakingly crafted The Dark Side of the Moon? Floyd’s most famous album appeared in 1973, when “long-playing records” appeared on vinyl. Back then, unless acts released tracks as singles, the only way of hearing individual tracks alone was to fiddle with the needle or hold a microphone in front of the stereo – a popular pastime among 70s teens – and record Roger Waters and co, perhaps accompanied by the sound of the family dog barking at the postman.
Downloading has changed everything. Now we can dip into albums, taking a little bit here and there. It’s a wonderful way of experiencing music, especially music you have never heard before, without having to fork out on an LP. However, the downside has been the slow death of the album as a creative form.
In recent years, the art of releasing a collection of songs that flow perfectly and make sense as a complete statement has faced a double onslaught. The digital era meant bands were suddenly having to come up with more and often inferior tracks just to pad out the longer CD format. But downloading has had a greater impact. The likes of Radiohead still take great care to release crafted albums, but often bands don’t really record albums any more. They record collections of downloadable tracks.
The upside of this is that many albums tend to have less filler; gone are the days of “frontloaded” LPs where a couple of hit singles at the start are followed by a lot of mush. Now, every track has to be good enough to be potentially downloaded. However, where would this approach would have left some of the greatest albums ever made? Would David Bowie’s opus The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars had anything like the same impact if people were able to dip in and out, experiencing the Ziggy character’s rise but avoiding his ultimate fate as a Rock ‘N’ Roll suicide? Granted, many concept albums are ludicrous prog-rock conceits. But it’s equally unthinkable to imagine hearing a non-concept masterpiece like Joy Division’s Closer in bite-sized chunks, rather than experiencing the full, unfolding horror/triumph of the second side’s stunning four-song sequence.
Joy Division (and, for years, New Order) refused to release album tracks as singles, treating albums and singles as separate entities, a stance recently adopted by MGMT. If you want to hear Pink Floyd tracks as standalones, download the songs they released as singles, like 1967’s psychedelic cross-dressing anthem Arnold Layne (also on compilations like Relics) or 1979’s teacher-baiting Another Brick in the Wall. Or download albums like Wish You Were Here and Meddle to hear as the creators intended. The marketing men might not approve, but it will be good for music and, more importantly, the fate of the album.
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TfL: staff cuts and future funding
Mar 12th
The start of my latest newsletter:
Cynicism is a dreadful thing. But when you receive a press release from a major public sector employer proclaiming a “vision for the future,” promising greater efficiency and containing a pledge on staffing that is hedged like the maze at Hampton Court, the jaded eye skips instinctively down the page to find where the job cuts have been hidden.
There will be 700-800, TfL thinks, 450 of them among ticket office staff (it’s all in here). Its defence is that more and more people are using Oysters and they have more points at which to purchase them, which means the need for ticket office staff is shrinking. It addresses concerns about safety – deserted stations and dead of night, that kind of thing – by pointing out that there are more police officers patrolling.
The Lib Dems aren’t impressed and neither are Labour, though their guns are semi-spiked by the fact that Ken Livingstone planned to close ticket offices too. I’d guess that Boris’s rationalisation for breaking a manifesto pledge, “ensuring there is always a manned ticket office at every station” (see page 2) may draw on this fact at next week’s MQT. Meanwhile, the RMT has pledged “an all-out fight”.
What happened to that no-strike deal (see page 6)? And what will happen to the flow of investment if and when George occupies the Treasury? Or indeed if Alistair remains there? Ponder this from Regeneration and Renewal:
Mayoral agency Transport for London is to publish a report next month to make the case for using a US infrastructure funding tool to fund a £600 million extension of the Northern Line to the Nine Elms area in Wandsworth.
Speaking yesterday in London at a conference organised by real estate advisers CB Richard Ellis, Matthew Hudson, head of corporate finance at TfL, said the report would set out a “concrete example” of how Tax Increment Financing could be used to unlock the regeneration of the Nine Elms opportunity area.
The Tif model, widely used in the US, finances infrastructure projects by borrowing against future tax revenues resulting from regeneration. “We have a report coming out in five weeks time, that will set out a concrete example of Tif, Hudson said. “It will have all the cashflows, all the structures, which I hope will stimulate the debate and move things forward.”
Remember Tif? Sounds like a nice girl. Boris thinks thinks so too.
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What should I do with my rings now I’m divorced?
Mar 12th
A reader wonders whether to hold on to her wedding ring after a divorce
Every week a Guardian Money reader submits a question, and it’s up to you to help him or her out – a selection of the best answers will appear in Saturday’s paper.
This week’s question
My husband and I divorced amicably recently and I am wondering what to do with my modest wedding and engagement rings. Should I sell them and use the money to mark my new life, or hang on to them? Have others regretted selling their rings, or wish they’d done it sooner?
What are your thoughts?
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