Posted on Life As We Live It, The City of London & Broad Street Ward

Football For Peace

My remarks at the Guildhall for Football For Peace this evening:

Welcome, each and every one of you, to Guildhall, and to the City of London!

I am delighted to be representing the Lord Mayor this evening, not only at a dinner full of international friends but for a cause which we can all support – world peace. As an international Ambassador for the financial and professional service sector, much of the Lord Mayor’s time is spent visiting and working with international officials to ensure prosperity, cultivate stability and harness peace across the globe.

But we can’t all be an Ambassador – and sometimes we must find other means to engage and develop with our global community. And what better way to do that than through a global sport, loved by an estimated 3.5 billion people around the world…

Football! A sport which, for decades, has united fans – in bars, pubs and cafés all over the planet!

It is a sport which thrives on diversity and interconnectivity – you’ll be rare to find a team in the premier league which isn’t supported in some way by an international player, manager or sponsor! And it is a sport which instils vital life skills in its players – skill such as teamwork, leadership and fairness.

These are the attributes of football which are promoted and cultured within Football for Peace’s work – increasing international dialogue and communication through the beautiful game. And nurturing empathy and understanding for our fellow world citizens. Quite simply, promoting peace.

Thank you, Football for Peace, for all your fantastic work. May I wish everyone here a most enjoyable evening.

Posted on Life As We Live It, Technology, The City of London & Broad Street Ward, Gresham College & Other Education Interests

From Archives To Modern Lives – Deep In The King’s College Scientific Archives

From Archives to Modern Lives: Frontiers of Trade and Technology
A survey of past and present innovation in association with King’s College London Archives, Wednesday, 15 November 2017

Surprisingly for some, London is, and almost always has been, a science city.  From the Gresham College days of the Tudor ‘New Learning’, Francis Bacon, the foundation of the Royal Society and on to the Industrial Revolution, genetics and even ‘fintech’, London has been at least as much about science & technology as it has been about trade & finance.

The World Traders had a wonderful day indeed.  Our main event, from 15:00 to 17:30, consisted of fully-illustrated presentations by six distinguished speakers, each at the very top of his or her own area of expertise. They referenced key objects of lasting scientific importance from King’s College London.

We handled numerous artefacts ranging from the original Wheatstone Telegraph of 1837 to the original DNA photo, “Photo 51”, to Barbara Cartland and Ted Hughes and Alan Ginsburg materials. Dr Brian May (yes, of Queen!) is an enormous fan of stereoscopy, heading up The London Stereoscopic Company http://www.londonstereo.com/, and created a 3D film for us. It feels like serious Livery one-up-person-ship that we can brag, “as we wore our 3D glasses Dr May leaped out from the screen to ‘Greet the Worshipful Company of World Traders’”.

The reception and dinner were on the eighth floor of Bush House in Aldwych (a building recently taken over by KCL, previously occupied by the BBC) with dramatic views from the City to Wesminster.

Wheatstone’s Cryptographs and Cipher

The full programme:

15:00 for 15:15      Reception, 1st Floor, Bush House, 101 (Auditorium)

15:15 – 15:30          Welcome
Deborah Bull, Assistant Principal King’s College London

                               Introduction
Dr Jessica Borge & Dr Geoff Browell

15:30 – 16:15         Computer Code
Artefact:                  Wheatstone’s Cryptographs and Cipher Post/ Telegraph TBC
Dr Jamie Barras
Professor Mischa Dohler

16:15 – 17:00          Life Code
Artefact:                   Photograph 51 TBC
Professor David Edgerton
Professor Karen Steel

17:00 – 17:45          Visual Code
Artefact:                   Wheatstone’s Stereoscope TBC
Denis Pellerin
Professor Reza Razavi

17:45 – 18:00          Concluding Remarks
Dr Geoff Browell

18:00 – 19:00          Drinks, 8th Floor, Bush House (South)

19:00 – 21:30          Dinner, 8th Floor, Bush House (North)
Guest Speaker: Dr Carina Fearnley

Posted on Life As We Live It, The City of London & Broad Street Ward

Foundations Of Fellowship

Remarks to: Worshipful Company of Mason’s Livery & The Associate Companies

Toast from the Guests by Alderman Professor Michael Mainelli, 1 November 2017, Mercers’ Hall

Master, Wardens, Aldermen, My Lord, Masters, Fellow Liverymen, Ladies & Gentlemen.  May I start by thanking the Renter Warden for his generous remarks. Peter Clark kindly honoured the World Traders at our Installation Banquet last week, and in turn I am honoured to sing for his supper tonight.

For a modern livery master at number 101, it can be daunting to address a venerable Company at number 30 that dates back to at least 1356, but certainly earlier.  Your deep history makes your future seem more certain, to the point that we modern companies can feel a bit expendable.  I happen to know a story about expendability.

A man once reproached the Canadian actor William Shatner, who played Captain Kirk in Star Trek: “On your show, you had Russians, Chinese, Africans, and many others – why did you never have a character of my nationality?”  Shatner supposedly comforted the man, replying, “My dear fellow, you must understand that Star Trek is set in the future.”

Amongst Masons, Ironmongers, Fishmongers, Costermongers, Cheesemongers, and even Fearmongers, should we be called WorldMongers or GlobeMongers?  My catchphrase this year is “Psssst.  Hey Buddy, want to buy a planet?”

The great gag writer Barry Cryer tells a marvellous story about the comedian Tommy Cooper.   When Tommy Cooper was on military service with the Horse Guards he was assigned palace sentry duty but fell asleep standing inside his sentry box.  While in the middle of this court martial-able offence, he half opened one eye to see that his Commanding Officer and the Regimental Sergeant Major were fast approaching to discipline him.  Closing his eye again he looked for a single, killing word that might free him from this predicament.  He shook himself, drew to his full height, opened both eyes and then said the one word that could save him –  “AMEN.”

If I had to describe the Masons with one word, what might it be?  Actually that word might well be ‘fellowship’.

There is no better name for a Master Mason than ‘Peter’, “on this rock…”  Your Master has a challenging year, some of which has required personal forebearance, and our thoughts are with him and his family.  He has focused on ‘fellowship’ to great success from what I’ve heard from his fellow Masons.  Success has led to a few nice remarks along the lines that “that fellow who knows it all is especially annoying to those of us who think we do.”

I should like to spend a moment on the wider fellowship amongst all our livery companies.

The livery represents simultaneously both Continuity & Change.  Our traditions date back at least some 1,500 years to the Saxon guilds, yet we would be close to unrecognisable to our forebears.  We constantly change, striving to make ourselves relevant to the City of London, to our nation, and to the world.

They say there’s a lot to be said for the fellow who doesn’t say it himself.  Again, your Master is an expert on Continuity & Change.  He is an Old Mercer, that is one of the last of the students at the Mercers’ School that was at Barnard’s Inn by Holborn.  For those who don’t know, the Mercers’ School was an independent school in the City of London with a history going back at least to 1542, and perhaps much further. It was operated by the generous owners of this glorious hall, the Worshipful Company of Mercers and was closed in 1959.  The Old Mercers Club itself intends to wind down gracefully in 2020 due to old age.  I had the honour, as a former Mercers’ School Memorial Professor of Commerce at Gresham College of being made an honorary Old Mercer some dozen years ago.  The Old Mercers received, and they gave.  Continuity & Change.

In a Brexit world, with an isolationist America First, inequality, climate change, a planet almost three times as crowded as when the Master was born, our liveries have to change, we have to remain relevant.  We have been here before.  There were enormous questions in the Victorian era about the seemingly privileged role of the livery.  But privileges should be tools for good.  I might point to an enduring benefit of those questions.  In response in 1878, the City of London Corporation and 16 Livery Companies created the national system of technical education and established The City and Guilds of London Institute, where I happen to sit on Council.

A Mason by name, the US quipster Mason Cooley once said, “The question you’re not supposed to ask is the important one.”   Today, questions about the livery, our traditions, our charitable status, and our governance are rising.  There are good answers to these questions, but we need to articulate them.  There are also better answers to these questions, and we need to create them. 

The Mercers, led by their Master and Clerk, have helped to incubate a new Pan-Livery initiative mimicking that of 140 years ago.  There are a number of work strands looking at the three traditional livery roles, commerce, community, and charity with particular attention to jobs, diversity, and education.  All the more necessary with social, technical, economic, and political change accelerating all around us.  In a working City of London of 450,000 people, with 18,000 businesses, 16,000 of them SMEs dear to the Master’s heart, we nearly 45,000 liverymen are the cogs that keep things functioning well together.  It’s not just the nearly hundred million pounds of charity giving each year, rather it’s the deep volunteer commitment to community and civic duty.  An example to a nation that needs to energise its local communities to face global challenges, not leaving everything to central government.

I commend the Pan-Livery initiative to you with a stick and a carrot.  The stick is that we will face increasing questions.  The carrot is that by working in fellowship together we, our City, and our nation are stronger, more resilient, and more effective.  Continuity & Change.

You Masons know better than any of us how to strengthen foundations and fellowship.  And thus it is, Master, from all your guests tonight – we celebrate your theme this year, “fellowship”.

Guests and Masons, it gives me great pleasure to ask you to rise and drink a toast of fellowship coupled with the name of the Master, Peter Clark, “to the Worshipful Company of Masons, root and branch, may it flourish forever … and to Peter Clark.”

Posted on Life As We Live It, The City of London & Broad Street Ward

Master Of The World! … Traders…

What an honour, and a delight!  I was so pleased to be installed as Master of the World Traders on Wednesday, 25 October.

The Installation Dinner was a significant event for Elisabeth, my daughters Maxine and Xenia, our friends, and me.  The Company assembled a glittering array of guests, expertly marshalled by our Clerk and Beadles into a warm combination of ceremony and celebration.  At the ceremonial court we thanked Robert and Barbara for their hard work and most successful year, admitted 11 freemen and 5 liverymen, taking the Company over 300 members.  We awarded our first Honorary Liveryman of the Company to the Secretary General of the Commonwealth, Baroness Scotland, who was our Tacitus Lecturer in 2015.  We dined, basking in wonderful music by CLS Close Harmony, later hearing Baroness Scotland’s thoughts on trade and the Commonwealth.  As the Germans might say, “sehr gemütlich”!

My dear friend, Immediate Past Master, Robert Woodthorpe Browne, performing the installation ceremony.

The text of my Toast To The Guests:

Master, Wardens, High Commissioner, My Lords, Aldermen, Ladies and Gentlemen.  This wonderful evening in Sir David Lewis’ and my Aldermanic Ward of Broad Street, next to Austin Friars and the Dutch Church, means so very much to Elisabeth and me, for it encompasses past, present, and future, friends and family.  Our feelings tonight are the subject of so many songs, from Karen Carpenter to one of my daughter’s favourites, Imagine Dragons, “We’re on top of the world”.

In 2006 past Master Jack Wigglesworth asked me to fill the spot Baroness Scotland had tonight with her insightful comments on the Commonwealth and Trade.  It was in this very Drapers’ Hall that he and Carlotta turned up the volume on their own CD and press-ganged me into the Company.  We’ve all had the honour of watching our Company grow under the stewardship of ten masters since, till this year we surpassed 300 members today under the direction of Michael Shapiro.  Our immediate immediate past Master, Wendy Hyde, invigorated our City connections.  The immediate past Master, Robert Woodthorpe Browne and his wife Barbara connected us with the varied and fascinating markets of London.

Baroness Partricia Scotland QC, Secretary General of the Commonwealth, receiving her Honorary Freedom of the Livery

For me, the present is coming to grips with being Master.  This City is full of Ironmongers, Fishmongers, Costermongers, Cheesemongers, and even Fearmongers.  What is Master of the World Traders?  Perhaps we should be the WorldMongers or GlobeMongers.  Around the same year that I was doing that talk for Jack, one of my daughters had to speak at school about her parents’ professions.  Did she want to talk about Daddy the scientist, the accountant, securities professional, or computer expert?  Certainly not Daddy the management consultant.  Who could ever explain that?  No, she chose the easy option and belted out to the entire class at full volume, “My Daddy is a World Trader”.

Now that I’m Master, I hope to explain our Company to everyone.  Wouldn’t it be nice to fulfil David Bowie’s lyrics – “You’re face to face, With the man who sold the world”.  I think my catchphrase might be “Psssst.  Hey Buddy, want to buy a planet?”

But the future is a tough sell these days.  We have creaking constitutions, Brexit, America First, WTO problems, let alone North Korean missiles, nuclear proliferation, hurricanes, and pandemic bugs.  Strangely, there are people who try to put a value on Earth.  $3,000 trillion is one number.  $5 quadrillion another.  Could we find some other species to sell it to and get thrown into the vacuum of space with huge wads of cash?  Could we use the proceeds to buy a slightly more upmarket planet with even nicer fjords in a better neighbourhood?  No, we need to succeed with what we have.  Ian Harris and I wrote a book, The Price of Fish: A New Approach to Wicked Economics and Better Decisions, pointing out that our core challenge as a species is “To live successfully with each other in a shrinking planet”.  Technology is essential to that hopeful success and thus our theme this year is “Trade & Technology”.

Mankind uses tools to control our environment, our planet, and our aspirations for our universe.  Technology is our distinguishing feature.  But it’s not all progress.  Douglas Adams notes: “Technology is a word that describes something that doesn’t work yet.”  “We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.  How do you recognize something that is still technology?  A good clue is if it comes with a manual.”  As Tears & Fears sang, “Nothing ever lasts forever, Everybody wants to rule the world”.

Before you should be a small gift from Elisabeth and me – technology that should help you get “a detailed grip on the big picture”, or perhaps a “big picture grip on the details”.  It’s a lens cloth or ‘screen wiper’ to help you see technology more clearly.  Hopefully it’s still held together by a humble clothes-pin.  In so many ways, technology is about taking back control from the environment, for clothes-pins that’s control of the wind.  Jérémie Victor Opdebec sneakily took out a patent for the dolly peg in 1809.  Two guys from Vermont blew that old tech apart.  In 1853 David M Smith’s “new and useful or improved…spring clamp for clothes lines” became the modern articulated peg, somewhat anthropomorphic and erotic according to the Economist, in harmonious opposition “the two longer legs may be moved toward each other and at the same time move the shorter ones apart”.

As a Professor, tonight I have to ask you an examination question about installations – How many World Traders does it take to install a light bulb?  The Answer: None, Adam Smith’s invisible hand will do it all.  Unfortunately the joke’s wrong, free markets need help.  If ever a year cried out for World Traders, it might be this.  Just the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) next April and our Brexit uncertainties place trade & technology in the forefront of the nation’s future.

All liveries are committed to civic commerce, community, and charity based around fellowship.  So what are World Traders going to do in 2017 and 2018?

Our theme is “Motivate, Create, Celebrate”.  On commerce, we respond to members who asked for more intellectual content about trade, going right back to our founding by Peter Drew in St Katharine’s Dock.

  • Trade has been as much science as finance. You must book 15 November– “From Archives to Modern Lives: Frontiers of Trade and Technology”.  You’ll have a chance to hold Photo 51, the original DNA image, and celebrate London technology from Thomas Gresham’s New Learning to the Royal Society and the modern era at Kings College.
  • On 21 March we debate “Technology & Trade In The Commonwealth”, with the post-graduates at Eric Tracey’s Goodenough College, co-hosted by the Commonwealth Enterprise & Investment Council.
  • On 22 February Dr Nathan Myhrvold delivers our Tacitus Lecture for Nick Mayhew, Jan Dawson, and the team. The renowned and controversial scientist, founder of Microsoft Research, and now founder and CEO of Intellectual Ventures with over 95,000 patents and strong views on patent trolling and geo-engineering is also an extreme cuisine scientific foodie colleague of Heston Blumenthal.
  • We are commissioning a research publication on the value of smart ledgers to world trade, are working with an ISO group on a qualification for World Trade, and will have number of other events looking in on the natural, life, formal, and applied sciences & technologies of our City.

On community, our Learned Clerk, Gaye Duffy, will nimbly execute a complex series of traditional events, but we want to be an even more tech savvy Company.  Our Communications Committee, led by Zoë Buckingham, has already developed a member-led website, will soon implement a new membership system, and also deploy charity and events systems inclusive of non-members.  We shall experiment more with social media and online meeting technology and produce a short World Traders’ video.  Our overseas trip this year will be to Dublin where the Irish government and the Industrial Development Authority are hosting us at Iveagh House, we’ll stay at Trinity College Dublin, one of my alma maters, and we’ll participate in Bloomsday, the annual celebration of Joyce’s Ulysses.  Our Education Committee under Sue Algeo is educating us at Gresham College events.

On charity, perhaps in anticipation of our Dublin Trip, Simon Maddox, the Events Committee, and the Court call on all members to support our attempt to break a Guinness World Record – “The Most Nationalities In A Simultaneous Popular Music Sing-along”.  Our attempt is scheduled for 16:00 on Monday, 27 November 2017 at St Lawrence Jewry Church, Guildhall Yard, just before the grand opening of the British Red Cross Christmas Market at Guildhall.  The challenge song is John Lennon’s “Imagine”, along with a Christmas Carol and a ‘trade song’ (suggestions welcomed). London Business School set the last record in 2016 with 72 nationalities; we need 101 for obvious reasons.  The proceeds go to the Red Cross, St Lawrence, and our charitable trust.

One of my favourite comedians, the surreal Steve Wright, said, “It’s a small world, but I wouldn’t want to have to paint it.”  Robert and Barbara painted a magnificent world in their year.  Elisabeth and I can’t top that, but perhaps we can paint a tech perspective on trade.  One thing I’ve learned about our Company over the years comes from Take That – “If you stay by our sides, we can rule the world.”

Tradereaps economic benefits from specialisation and comparative advantage, creates prosperity, distributes success and wealth, and collectively enriches all of our societies and communities.  Trust underpins all trade and investment, firmly based on the City of London’s motto, “Dictum Meum Pactum” (“my word is my bond”).

As I said, all liveries are committed to civic community, commerce and charity based around fellowship.  Our fellowship is cemented by having our friends over as guests.

I ask the Company and Guests to rise together and drink the Company’s toast inspired by Thomas Jefferson’s inaugural address of 1801, “COMMERCE AND HONEST FRIENDSHIP WITH ALL.”

11 new freemen and 5 new liverymen take us over 300 members.

May I thank one and all most sincerely for your immense support.  I had some big trepidations, possibly only surpassed at a certain ceremony with Elisabeth some two decades back, but wound up enjoying the evening enormously and being so proud of our Company.

Posted on Life As We Live It, Long Finance, The City of London & Broad Street Ward

London Forever! Reality Or Rhetoric?

The Financial Services Group of Livery Companies asked me to provide an inaugural FSG Lecture in memory of its Founding Convenor, Jeremy Goford, Past Master Actuary“London Forever! Reality or Rhetoric?”  I was pleased to deliver it on Wednesday, 20 September 2017 at
Mercers’ Hall, London.Though I met him late in life through the livery movement, Jeremy and I enjoyed many conversations and disputations on the auditing, accounting, and actuarial professions, especially their use of numbers. Jeremy’s love of our City was palpable.  I was delighted that the Financial Services Group of Livery Companies chose to honour his memory with this inaugural lecture,  While you can read the full transcript, with slides – Jeremy Goford Memorial Lecture – London Forever – Reality or Rhetoric 2017.09.20 v1.3

a summary was published in Fintech Finance on 25 September, reproduced below:

London Forever! Reality Or Rhetoric?

This month, Z/Yen Group, published the 22nd edition of the Global Financial Centres Index.  GFCI 22 showed almost all major financial centres following the downward lurch of London and New York in GFCI 21.  In the top 20, only Frankfurt rose, quite significantly due to many London bank announcements of headquarter moves.

Finance only exists to support the ‘real economy’ of commerce and trade.  This telling tumble among financial centres is due to fears over trade, not finance.  ‘America First’, isolationist rhetoric damages perceptions of future US trade, while Brexit rhetoric harms perceptions of UK and European trade.

With so much changing, it is right to ask whether London will forever be the premier global centre for professional, business, and financial services.  Financial centres do rise and fall, from Amsterdam to Izmir to Zanzibar.  The 1375 Catalan Atlas of the known world by Abraham Cresques of Mallorca has an inscription: “This lord is Musa Mali .., so abundant is the gold which is found in his country that he is the richest and most noble king in all the land.”  Musa hailed from Timbuktu in today’s Mali.

London’s five centuries of success are due to a sustained confluence of several factors, the ‘accidental’ ones being maritime location, early infrastructure, Continental wars, and the rise of the USA over the past century.  Our index comprises well over 100 ‘intentional’ factors, but I would emphasise the business environment, a trading culture, and the rule of law.   However, people like simple answers, not statistics. So just two things, structural intensity and fair treatment.

All cities are intense, but structural intensity is special to the City of London.  With only 9,000 residents and 450,000 commuting workers, it’s a 98% chance anyone you meet on the street is working.  And Crossrail’s success will raise that chance to 99%.  A temperate climate, twisting alleyways, and numerous drinking places ensured that from the time of the Tudors financial workers met each other frequently.  From pubs to coffee shops to Americano & Cappucino networking centres, supplemented by air transport and IT.

While the UK’s £61 billion trade surplus from financial services is exported via electronic pipes, deals need face-to-face trust to start, and often to complete.  We need to keep raising that intensity of contact as the City of London Corporation is doing by planning for significantly more pedestrians.  Video-conferencing supplements deals, but we still need to meet, often unplanned.

The belief that all comers will be treated fairly has been a London success factor since the 1290 mistake of expelling the Jews.  London’s subsequent welcoming history needs no recounting, from Lombards of old to welcoming back the Jews in 1655 to today’s Syrians.  All were increasingly treated with the same commercial rights as Englishmen.  Rule of law is crucial, but long before anyone goes near a court, any nation that wishes to prosper must trade from an open and competitive environment.  Competition needs a well-educated populace with a state sector preventing cartels, barriers-to-entry, information asymmetries, and agency problems, while not crowding-out markets.

If we get our own house in order, trade will come.  Brexit doesn’t change the basics.  You can’t be an international centre without international people.  Successful people want to live in successful places.  Successful places are cosmopolitan.  Reputation is vital: 20 years to build and five minutes to ruin.  We have problems certainly.  If Britain is open for business, try opening a bank account.

We have problems certainly.  If Britain is open for business, try opening a bank account.  With or without Brexit, we need to stimulate investment in quality education and training, health, infrastructure, broadband; sort out the airports (plural), make the nation as ‘visa less’ to get to as possible, make financial account-opening a one minute process, create a competitive housing market, simplify the tax system, and so on.  Brexit adds the complexity of ‘transition’ being woefully unclear, ‘trade’ structures breaking down, and welcoming ‘talent’ uncertain.  So we need swift decisions on timing, on terms-of-trade, and talent, for example stop prevaricating on EU nationals’ and students’ status.

Our reality must rise to meet our rhetoric, but it was ever thus.  In the history of London we see the truth of Aldous Huxley’s comment, “The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.”  Making London a great place to live solves most problems.  We need to be honest about our faults and not let false rhetoric impede fixing them.  We are deficient in some areas, but not desperate; in danger of having our Emperor’s clothes disrobed, but with time to knit some new garments.

We’ve been being told for well over a year what we supposedly voted for in a non-binding referendum.  Whatever, the vote was certainly a vote for change.  Quality guru W Edwards Deming sets a low bar for the lazy: “It is not necessary to change.  Survival is not mandatory.”  I am sceptical about claims that we businesspeople will find fabulous fortunes hitherto overlooked in far-flung foreign lands, but I am very positive the closest opportunity is change for the better at home, toward improved structural intensity and fair competition.  Londoners are certainly not lazy.

Trade reaps economic benefits from specialisation and comparative advantage.  Trade creates prosperity, shares success, and enriches our environment.  Trust holds all trade relationships together.  The clearest sign of trust is that people want to live and work in London and the UK.  If we keep that, we keep everything, including the top spot a century from now in Global Financial Centres Index 222.

Posted on Life As We Live It, The City of London & Broad Street Ward

Equilex – 22 September 2017

So there you are, waiting for the Christ’s Hospital annual St Matthew’s Day parade through the City of London.   St Matthew’s Day, traditionally 21 September, is held to save the souls of accountants, bankers and tax collectors, i.e. money men (well, to ruin a good theme, perfumers too).  Over the past decade, the service beforehand and the parade have been great fun, following the students through rain or shine as one of the finest marching bands in the UK leads you forward.  It all ends at Guildhall where the students meet the Lord Mayor and receive their ‘largesse’, a coin fresh from the Royal Mint, before heading to lunch.

As an Almoner, you’ve just been inside St Sepulchre-without Newgate, the musicians’ church, for the service.  The service is always uplifting.  Surrounded by hundreds of pupils who really know how to sing, you can let loose with total abandon and release both of your notes.

Outside the church just before 12:30, you spy a strange shape on the footpath creeping towards you.  Suddenly you realise it is the shadow of Lady Justice (Iustitia) from the Old Bailey on the opposite side of the street.  You swing round 180 degrees and point and shoot.  And you gather this snap:

Glorious, eh?  And then you realise it’s the equinox.  Exquisite timing and titling for the Equilex.  And many thanks to your mobile phone.  Then you can return to events and marching through the streets:

Who knows, perhaps a small, smelly splinter of my soul was saved.

Posted on Life As We Live It, Long Finance, Gresham College & Other Education Interests

Liquidity Ditty – LiquiDitty – The Poem Drops

Ten years ago I gave a lecture on liquidity at Gresham College – “Liquidity: Finance In Motion Or Evaporation?”  – London, England (5 September 2007).  I recommend the transcript as easiest to read with the slides.  The lecture was actually scheduled back in February 2005 (yes) as I looked ahead ujneasily towards a liquidity crisis.  The timing turned out to be too good as I came back from summer break after BNP Paribas started the financial crises news and things lurched onwards to Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, RBS, etc.

Engraving of a flea, Micrographia by (fellow) Gresham Professor Robert Hooke, 1665.

In these days of Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) this lecture seems to be coming back in popularity and I wonder about a reprise.  Meanwhile, I couldn’t resist ending the lecture with a little ditty of my own, based on Jonathan Swift’s construction around a flea, The Siphonaptera, that seems worth sharing again:

Big pools have little pools

which suck out their liquidity,

and little pools still lesser pools

and so on to aridity.

 

So, financiers observe, small pools

suck larger pools liquidity,

yet tinier pools drain other drops,

and so on to aridity.

Posted on Life As We Live It, The City of London & Broad Street Ward

British Red Cross Christmas Market @ Guildhall, 27 & 28 November 2017

Every other year the City of London hosts the British Red Cross Christmas Market at Guildhall. For 2017, the Guildhall Christmas Market will take place on Monday & Tuesday, 27 & 28 November.  Monday is a gala preview evening with a Royal visit.  It costs £40.  The market is open to the public Tuesday from 10.30 to 20:00pm. Tickets are just £5 and include a complimentary glass of wine.

This unmissable shopping experience will feature over 100 retailers, live music, and fun events. Be sure to pop into the indoor food market, outdoor German market, affordable art market, designer pop-up shop with unrivalled discounts, plus food and drinks workshops and tasting sessions.

This year it’s Elisabeth and my turn to co-chair the event.  We are actively looking for sponsors of all kinds, and the sponsorship package ideas are here – Christmas Market 2017 – sponsorship.  For example, you can:

  • be a Headline Sponsor (great association for large corporates), a Royal Reception Sponsor, a drinks sponsor, a Weihnachtsmarkt Sponsor (great for German or Austrian firms), a Foodiefest Sponsor (for catering and related trades);
  • donate an ‘experience’ such as a tour or work experience, or objects of value to the Silent Auction;
  • donate art to the Affordable Art Market;
  • or give a donation to help the British Red Cross.

BRC Christmas Market 2017

 

Whether you need to do your Christmas shopping, fancy enjoying a gluhwein or want find a designer bargain, make sure you visit this exciting Christmas Market, based in the heart of the City of London.  A Weihnachts Market in Guildhall Yard will also be open to spectators during the evening, where they can witness a spectacular demonstration from the Company of Pikemen and Musketeers.BRC photos

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More Information

Date: 27 November 2017 to 28 November 2017

Preview Evening: 27 November 2017: £40 (Includes re-entry on 28 November)

Public day: 28 November 2017: £5 (Entry is free after 5pm)

Add ons on the Public day:

2 course set Christmas Lunch 12.00 – 2.30 £20

Champagne afternoon tea 3.30 – 5.30 £20

Workshops £5 entry on the day

Tickets will go on sale from September 2017 

Address: Guildhall, Gresham Street, London EC2V 7HH

Contact: Laura Deacon

Telephone: 0207 877 7606

Email: ldeacon@redcross.org.uk

Posted on Sailing Through Life

Lady Daphne – End Of Our Era

Thames sailing barges (“barge” meaning without a deep keel) were amongst the fastest and most versatile trading ships ever built. Famous for their ochre sails, able to point well into the wind, suitable for waters as shallow as five feet, capable of lowering both masts to pass under bridges and fit with two large cargo holds, these remarkable craft dominated coastal shipping through a combination of economic efficiency and sailing prowess. Even more remarkably, they were sailed by a crew of “a man, a boy and a dog”, which contrasts with the large crews needed on some of today’s modern yachts. Thames sailing barges were also fleet, and their racing history extends over 100 years. The trading waters for Thames sailing barges included England, Ireland and the Continent, with rumours of longer trips for a rare few to the Americas. Thames sailing barges also served honourably in war, evacuating many of the men from Dunkirk and sweeping mines.

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Posted on Life As We Live It, The City of London & Broad Street Ward

Hartley? Hartley? Who The Heck Is Hartley?

I was delighted to be asked to give a ‘vote of thanks’ to my dear friend Archie Galloway, a former Common Councilman for Broad Street Ward:

“David Hartley – Arsonist By Appointment”

Vote Of Thanks To Historian Archie Galloway

Guildhall Historical Association, Guildhall, Monday, 9 January 2017

Chairman, fellow historians,

To paraphrase Historian Galloway, the first time I heard of David Hartley (1732 – 1813), aka David Hartley the Younger to distinguish him from his famous father, was when I got an email last week asking me to give this vote of thanks.  We’ll come to Archie’s record on introducing me to the unexpected later.  Archie read out Hartley’s obituary that concludes, “Hartley was, if not one of those who made history, at least was in singularly close touch with the stirring events of a most eventful period.”  I think that obituary is slightly unfair, for while he may not have played on the very highest levels of the political or scientific fields, Hartley certainly followed his friend Franklin’s advice, “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing”, by doing both well at his own level.david-hartley-english-diplomat-humanities-social-sciences-librarynew-york-public-library

Sir John Stuttard at our last meeting pointed out the contributions of Alderman William Beckford supporting John Wilkes and, in turn, the American colonies.  Archie points to the even deeper support, nay friendship, that David Hartley had with Benjamin Franklin.  As part American, while aware of Franklin’s imperfections, I ‘revere’ (no, not Paul Revere) that immense polymath and politician, and envy Hartley his warm relationship.  Over the weekend I had some time to browse some of the copious correspondence between the two men, and it was clearly a deep friendship that sustained itself through a bitter conflict.

To discuss Hartley seems prescient scheduling as today’s news is dominated by the nature of the special relationship between our two nations and foreign influence on American politics [Trump and Russian influence].  Even more unexpectedly, my morning was spent trying to help a new fire company producing a novel fire suppressant additive, of which Hartley would approve.  Given the state of politics today it is tempting to emulate Hartley and offer all politicians a breakfast upstairs while perhaps turning off the safety equipment.

Archie mentions John Jay in passing.  John Jay (1745 – 1829) was an American statesman, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, also a signatory of the Treaty of Paris, and appointed by George Washington as first Chief Justice of the United States.  Jay was yet another in the anti-slavery movement which seems, as much as representation and taxation, to define the interactions of the transatlantic relationships at the turn of the end of the 18th century.  Alongside Hamilton and Madison, Jay was one of The Federalist Papers triumvirate.  While Jay wrote only four of the 85 papers, they were those “Concerning Dangers from Foreign Force and Influence”, issues that seem to have become more pressing of late.  In a letter to Franklin, Jay looked back to the Treaty of Paris negotiations, recalling, “We worked in strange but successful concert. We had in common, I think, good will and good sense.”1  I wonder how much of this common concert was engendered by sharing common values on important issues such as slavery, free trade, and the rights of men.

I promised a word about Archie and the unexpected.  Without Archie I wouldn’t be standing here today.  He converted me to the social side of Broad Street and the Ward Club.  Then he and Sir David Lewis encouraged me to become a Gresham Professor.  I might note that Franklin was a Royal Society member and thus also involved with Gresham College in those days, as was probably Hartley and certainly Hartley’s father.  Without Archie’s encouragement I certainly wouldn’t have stood for Alderman, and thus not have become a member of this esteemed Association.

Just as Archie bumped into the Conservators’ Chairman on Putney Heath, he bumped into me one day in 2007.  As many of you know, my wife Elisabeth and I own a 1923 Thames Sailing Barge, Lady Daphne.  The managers of London Bridge City Pier removed the water supply one day ten years ago leaving us parched along the river.  Their reason?  In an echo of Hartley, the hosepipe connection was a fire hazard.  As he did on Putney Heath, Archie took up our cause.  He fought the health & safety lunacy and restored the supply.  Finally, I might note my surprise returning home one night across Tower Bridge to see that my friend also has his monument.  His name is engraved on the 1994 Centenary Plaque on the south east tower of the bridge.

Now, as historians, many of you will note the closing of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, which sadly made both the crack-inclined Liberty Bell and the Economist’s 2016 Christmas obituary.  I have brought along one of their hand chimes to toll the end of this vote of thanks, not least because I certainly don’t want to obtain a Hartley-esque reputation that my “rising always operates as a dinner bell”.

I think you’ll agree that both David Hartley and Archie Galloway have obeyed Franklin twice over.  Both write things worth reading and do things worth writing.

[CHIME]

May I ask you to join me in thanking Historian Archie Galloway and may I please propose: “That the paper be printed and circulated, and be made available for publication at a later date”.  Thank you.