Clueless in social studies?

Hurricane/Tropical Storm Gustav and a 5 month old?

Creationists?

The man I’ve loved for eight years has asked me out?

Our laboratories and colleges ought to define Britain, not our greed

London’s School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Royal Opera House are no more than a mile apart, but last Thursday the gulf seemed unbridgeable. The problem was not opera, at which London excels (as it does in the study of tropical disease). It was what was being discussed at the conference being held at the venue by London’s mayor, Boris Johnson, to assess the future of the capital’s economy.

London possesses one of the most vibrant clusters of medical research institutions in the world. For example, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine won the 2009 Gates Award for Global Health. Professor Brian Greenwood was the first winner of the Hideyo Noguchi Africa prize last year – Japan’s equivalent of the Nobel prize – for his work on malaria. It is an extraordinary institution, one of the cluster of medical foundations, royal colleges and teaching hospitals in London that make it the world’s health capital. This is part of London’s economic and moral future that the city, and the country, should treasure, advance and speak up for.

Yet there was not a word about it at the conference – nor the other London universities such as Imperial, which ranks with Harvard and Yale in the world’s top three, nor UCL, LSE and King’s. Each is a centre of global intellectual excellence. This is the knowledge economy – London and Britain’s future.

Instead, we had to hear about the importance of hedge funds. I am sick of hedge funds. Sick of their special pleading that they should not suffer the regulation proposed by Brussels and will flee the country, supposedly taking billions in tax revenue with them. Sick of politicians – Johnson on the right and Paul Myners on the left – feeling that they have to speak up for them as an allegedly key part of our financial service industry, so hitting back at the delusions of mainland Europeans that hedge funds represent all that is bad about Anglo-Saxon capitalism.

But hedge funds do represent the unlovely priorities of Anglo-Saxon capitalism. They were an important factor behind today’s financial crisis. Brutally, it would matter scarcely a jot if the hedge-fund industry shrank to the size it was a decade ago. It might even promote a less casino-oriented financial system. Instead, I want to hear politicians talk about great innovations and inventions. I want them to fight for what counts – the clusters of wealth-generating excellence in medicine, health, biotechnology, engineering, our great manufacturing companies, creative industries, and business service companies. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if instead of pleading for hedge funds on Radio 4′s Today programme as Johnson did last week, he went into bat for, say, more resources for our financially pressed but brilliant universities and research teams. But the country’s Brian Greenwoods don’t invest the time and effort in lobbying, funding political parties or turning up at agreeable lunches. They just get on with saving lives.

The idea that financial services are somehow a sector that deserves special privileges because of its unique contribution to the balance of payments, tax receipts and employment lives on – despite the astonishing events of the last nine months. At the conference I joined a panel discussing London’s economic prospects with Clara Furse, former CEO of the London Stock Exchange, and Bob Wigley, former chair of Merrill Lynch Europe. In otherwise good and level-headed presentations both urged everyone to get beyond scapegoating financial services and move on. Finance did not need more regulation, they said, and instead needed to be allowed to get on with the job of laying the golden egg, and hedge funds in particular should be protected from Brussels’s regulation. Their case was echoed in the government’s white paper on financial services. Normal Treasury rigour, which would have been sceptical about a business sector whose current size is predicated on obviously unsustainable and rigged super-profitability, was set to one side, replaced by PR guff about the importance of the financial sector and how it must be protected from risk.

We should expect better, given the scale of the recession we have faced and the scale of support we have had to lavish on the financial sector. Hedge funds in particular cannot be allowed to peddle the fiction that they had no role in the financial crisis. For the record, in July 2007 London and New York hedge funds had assets under management of some $2 trillion, of which up to $1.75 trillion (we will never know the exact figures) was financed by borrowing. It was the collapse of two Bear Stearns hedge funds and three BNP Paribas hedge funds in July and August of 2007 that triggered the paralysis of the interbank markets in New York and London. Vast hedge-fund borrowing, sub-prime mortgage debt and falsely insured collateralised debt obligations were part of a dangerous mixture with potential losses running into trillions that terrified banks and depositors alike. Hence the run in the interbank market and the liquidity crisis. Along the way, Bernie Madoff’s hedge funds were shown to be a $50bn rip-off.

The sector plainly needs regulation. Nor is the European commission’s much-criticised proposal to cap levels of hedge-fund debt so outrageous. Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the IMF, writes as an ex-insider that it takes courage to challenge the financial oligarchs created over the last 20 years – richer, more powerful and more self-interested than even Russian oligarchs. The commission should be congratulated for its bravery rather than castigated for its meddling. Hedge-fund borrowing – the key to super-returns – can destabilise the system; it needs upper limits. Thank God someone says so.

William Baumol, one of the great economic theorists of growth and development, argues that there are only limited numbers of entrepreneurs. The issue is whether they go into productive or unproductive enterprise. Countries that allow particular groups to rig markets and create too much economic rent – returns above the true added value – divert entrepreneurs into rent-seeking, unproductive enterprise. Hedge-fund oligarchs who insist they should be free to borrow as much as they like, whenever they like, whatever the wider risks, are rent-seekers – rigging the market to suit themselves. Yes, they pay some tax; but we should offset the revenue we get with the revenue we lose when investors use their services to evade and avoid tax.

A few hedge funds do bring innovation to investment management; most are an economic cost. We lose net tax revenue; we incur risks of financial instability; entrepreneurial resource is diverted into unproductive activity; we create a culture that celebrates financial oligarchs and their values rather than what goes on in our great universities and great companies. British citizens know this in their marrow – as do many in the City. It is time that someone other than the European commission spoke up for a better vision of Britain.

CAN YOU HELP ME ARRANGE THESE WORDS?.alphabetically?

Black Moore goldfish in tropical community is getting sick…?

A couple of weeks ago I upgraded my well established 10 gallon to a 40 gallon. The transition went well, we only had 3 fish so after we were sure the water was stable we got three more. One being a black moore goldfish. I have heard a lot of mixed advice about mixing goldfish with the tropical fish but by boyfriend REALLY wanted it. It has been about a week and he has developed what looks like white patches on his side. I am assuming that it is some sort of disease and at this point don’t know what to do next. The fish in my tropical community have never had any health issues and as I have had them for over a year I am concerned that they will in turn get sick. I have a one gallon tank I use for fry… should I put the moore in there… I don’t know…HELP

Im staying in a tropical area and a week ago my dog started having major appetite loss,hair loss,weight loss..

Hes had weight loss,appetite loss,he only drinks water and doesnt eat anything ,he throws up hair balls and has a lot of hair loss.Does anyone have a clue of what the name of the disease he might have is

ps.i took him to a vet here in mexico where i am and the vet said that he didnt know what my dog had and to just put him to sleep! plz help!

Tort law question on negligence, please help!?

Lucy, the patient, has an appointment at hospital to see Elizabeth, the Doctor, with symptoms X, Y and Z. While symptoms X and Y are the same as those of common English Disease A, symptom Z is not linked to any disease common in England. Elizabeth diagnoses Lucy with English Disease A and treats him accordingly. In fact, Lucy has Tropical Disease B, which is new and little known in England, having only been publicised three months ago in the medical journal ‘Tropical Diseases Quarterly’, which Elizabeth does not read, but which the hospital library subscribes to, along with numerous other medical journals. Left untreated, Tropical Disease B causes a patient’s joints in their arms and legs to become stiff, making most everyday activities, especially walking, extremely difficult. If Tropical Disease B had been diagnosed by Elizabeth, Lucy could have been successfully treated.

On his way home from hospital, Lucy is knocked down by a bus after the driver, Brian, falls asleep at the wheel. Although Lucy survives the accident, she has to have both her legs amputated as a result of the injuries sustained in the accident.

A month later, Lucy is diagnosed with a case of Tropical Disease B, which by then is irreversible, when the joints in her arms start to become stiff.

Advise Lucy whether she may be able to claim compensation using the tort of negligence.

tropical fish – mollys?

I have a 30 gallon tropical tank with comunity fish in it – mollys, a spotted dojo, some tetras. My mollys have been giving me issues, they are the only fish who have gotten sick or died at all. I swore I wouldn’t get any more, but then my last girl died off… all I have now is a boy and a little baby (female). Should I get a few more females for him to keep company? Will it really be upsetting for him to not have any other adult mollys around?
Also, if I do go ahead and get a few more female mollys I’d like to protect the rest of the tank from them for a while to make sure they’re nto bringing any diseases into the tank. Any suggestions as to how long I should keep them in the second smaller tank before introducing them to the rest of the group?

Next Page »