The greatest show on earth?

I was asked the other day if I was looking forward to the world cup. I guess that should be FIFA men's world cup these days but I'm of the generation where "world cup" unqualified by any other words can only mean one thing. As I am not a great fan of international football between world cups the answer was a little surprising: enormously. Now I'm retired there should be plenty of tme to watch it, like many famous games I watched back in the day: England against The Argies, Portugal and Germany in England 1966; Brazil's carnival of football in Mexico 1970 with Carlos Alberto lashing in the final goal of the final after a flowing move; bleary eyed at work after staying up to watch Argentina beat Peru 6-0 then go on to win the trophy in their own country in 1978; Italy beating Brazil 3-2 in Spain in 1982 and going on to win that tournament (I think I got to watch that because I was on holiday, in Italy possibly - or maybe skiving); Lineker's golden boot year and Maradona's "hand of god" goal in 1986; Gazza's tears in 1990 and Michael Owen's wonder goal against Argentina in 1998. 

I didn't expect to won't watch many of the games live, other those of England and Wales, until the knock out stage but in practice the timing of the matches has meant I've had the telly on quite a lot already. My appetite for this world cup has been whetted partly by listening to a wonderful series of podcasts by Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook. Both are serious historians and their The Rest is History podcasts (there have been over 250 episodes) range across the aeons covering things like the fall of Rome to the fall of Liz Truss. But last week they issued three hour long podcasts on the history of the world cup.

They started the first by noting that many of their listeners would groan at the prospect of them talking about football, indeed even sport, feeling that it's "not history". But Holland points out that football is "the single most popular activity that's ever been known to humanity". Hmm, what about sex? (He went on to clarify "it's followed by more people than any other leisure activity that we've ever had"). Calling it a "brilliant window" on history they noted that the world cup has reflected political events and issues ever since it started in 1930. It represents a "four yearly temperature check on the state of geo-politics".

So the controversy surrounding the world cup being held in Qatar is far from unusual.  Holland noted that the issues about corruption, bribery, the lives lost in indentured labour and the cultural sensitivities of Qatar hosting the event are very much issues of the present day. "Every world cup holds up a mirror to the convulsions and turbulence in the broader world". The world cup is a story of nationalism and nation building in which often authoritarian regimes attempt to co-opt popular entertainment to their own ends.  It was held in Mussolini's Italy in 1934 and in Argentina at the height of repression there in 1978. Holland and Sandbrook noted that the younger countries, like Italy and Brazil, had not only been much more keen to have a world cup than the established political and football powers like England but had overtly used hosting the competition for nation building. For the 1950 finals Brazil constructed the massive Maracana stadium (capacity 150,000 though nearly 200,000 got in to watch Brazil lose in the final) as a statement of modernisation. It was the first large concrete structure in Brazil, rapidly followed by a splurge of construction at Brasilia that bankrupted the country. Qatar being awarded it was controversial and, from a corruption point of view, smelly. I was surprised there wasn't more fuss at the time but then the 2018 finals were awarded on the same day - to Russia. Four years on Putin grabbed Crimea, four years after that he swaggered around with the FIFA executives at the finals and four years further on he invaded the rest of Ukraine. 

Unlike Qatar, Russia was at least a traditional footballing country. Though FIFA has consistently tried to spread the game geographically, the finals had never been held in the middle east and few smaller countries can afford to host them. There are plenty of countries at least as repressive as Qatar. To my knowledge the human rights record of a country is not one of the selection criteria used by FIFA, even if perhaps it should be. (Good luck in getting FIFA representatives to back that).

There have been plenty of other controversies. In the aforementioned 1982 world cup, Paolo Rossi was included in the Italy squad despite being in poor shape, poor form and had only recently been playing after a two year ban for match fixing (which he denied). The rest was history. There was the Bobby Moore/bracelet arrest in Colombia just before the 1970 tournament in Mexico; Maradona's drug bust in the 1994 finals and the Brazilian Ronaldo's mysterious illness before the 1998 final. What next?

At last on Sunday we got to the tournament. Turning on BBC before the first match I found they weren't covering the opening ceremony, though Saint Gary has said since they never do. But what they also have never previously done is to open with a documentary style tirade against FIFA and the host nation. We know that people worked in poor conditions and far too many lost their lives building the stadia. But the standards in activities like construction would have been no different for the world cup than any other project in that part of the world. Why not campaign for higher standards across the board - what's so different about football, and why single out Qatar?

There is of course a worrying discrepancy between the death toll quoted by international organisations and Qatar's "official" total. I assume that, against all decency, the Qataris are not counting deaths from causes like heat stroke. I wonder if, in the years after Qatar was awarded the world cup in 2010, Britain offered to share expertise about how we achieved an unprecendented zero fatalities building the London 2012 Olympic park, with an injury rate less than a third of the normal rate for construction in the UK.  Surely we should be offering to help and advise, not just criticise once the lives have already been lost.

I accept that there are long standing concerns about human rights in Arabic countries. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and apartheid in South Africa (so a long time ago) I made it a theme of mine that the next big human rights issue to address was the treatment of women in Muslim countries. (I have since accepted that China is as big a problem). But at the same time why should we expect countries to suddenly change their laws and culture to catch up with a position we have only just reached ourselves, painfully slowly? I suppose if it made Lineker, Shearer and the programme's directors feel better about themselves the holier than thou BBC achieved something, though perhaps cynically I suspect it was actually to deflect attacks on them for doing their job and covering the competition. I feel we should be saying "we do things rather differently" rather than haranguing other countries to adapt our current practices. Practices which may themselves seem neolithic in a few years time and which, in many cases, we have only adopted ourselves in the last few decades. 

So while, like most, I found FIFA president Gianni Infantino's near hour long monologue at his press conference just before the competition started rather weird, I could understand the point he was making about countries with a chequered history (if you go back far enough) lecturing other countries. Politicians in western Europe in particular seem far too ready to expect football and other sports to do the heavy lifting on human rights while happily selling weapons to the same countries and buying their oil. Surely that's the wrong way round? Ah, but we need their gas...

After all, if we only played against countries with similar views, policies and legal structures we would be playing in the breakaway world cup, not FIFA's, as only 26 countries out of 195 independent sovereign states in the world recognise same sex marriage - a minority even in within Europe. 69 countries criminalise homosexuality, some with the death penalty. 36 of those countries are in the Commonwealth so maybe the vocal minority who think we shouldn't be in Qatar would care to take that up with King Charles. If we said our sports men and women shouldn't go to compete in those countries or against them it would be quite restrictive. For example, you could forget playing cricket against Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan and the West Indies. On England's last two tours of the Windies thay've played at Barbados, Antigua, Grenada, St Lucia and St Kitts all of which are on the BBC's list of countries where homosexuality is illegal. (To be fair that doesn't necessarily mean that the authorities would actively seek to prosecute LGBT persons; I accept there are degrees of intolerance).

I conclude that the politicians would rather the pressure was brought to bear by footballers so they don't have to do it and risk those gas supplies or lovely arms sales. I suppose one could argue there is evidence that it works - ostracising South Africa from international cricket did seem to put the pressure on apartheid, though I'm not clear whether it was actually any more effective than my personal ban on South African Granny Smith's and Barclays Bank which started when I was a student in the 1970s. (I remember Mrs H being very puzzled about the former when we got married).

For me the players of countries like Britain should have focussed their concern on proper compensation for the families of the deceased. Pushing hard on a single issue would surely have been more likely to achieve a breakthrough than the rather nebulous (and never to be seen?) "one love" armband.

Talking of which, the least surprising development in the run up to the England team kicking off was the decision not to wear said armband and attract a booking for their captain before kick off. The laws of the game preclude wearing political slogans or statements - law 4 section 5 says "Equipment must not have any political, religious or personal slogans, statements or images". It's not a new law: Robbie Fowler was fined back in 1997 for revealing a t-shirt supporting the striking Mersey dockers. A fine has been the usual sanction but a yellow card can be shown for "persistent infringement of the laws of the game" so it's not a leap to say refusing to remove an offending armband is a yellow card offence. If you think the "One Love" rainbow armband is not a political statement then just imagine Iran playing at Wembley and wearing an armband whose meaning is "respect the hijab".

Nevertheless the pundits seem to be doubling down on their criticism of teams for not standing up to FIFA over the armbands. Roy Keane had a good go at the Germans before their first match. Personally I think they are forgetting what their priorites would have been when they were players. I wonder if FIFA has briefed referees whether to allow a game to start if unapproved armbands are worn? Maybe we'll see a referee send four players off (you need at least seven for the game to be played). 

To be clear, I detest the lack of human rights in Arabic, middle-eastern and other Muslim countries but I'm finding the specific demonisation of Qatar a bit over the top. I feel we are more likely to reinforce and harden views rather than influence positive change. The biggest statement so far has come from the brave Iranian team - by keeping their mouths shut when their national anthem was played.

When at last the football started within four minutes we had the first VAR controversy, Ecuador's opening goal being disallowed for an offside that no-one but the VAR ref could see. Closely followed by the inconsistency in VAR thrown up in England's opening match by there being no VAR review when Maguire was pulled to the ground in the first half, while Iran got a penalty for a not terribly obvious or effective shirt pull by John Stones in the last minute of the match. Fortunately it didn't matter but it shows again that the issue is people not technology.

At least we had the luxury of England having a 4 goal cushion after a pretty decent display against the team ranked 20th in the world. (The FIFA rankings are clustered most tightly in England's group, with all the teams being in the top 20, so there is a case for considering it the hardest group). We can but hope that Gareth Southgate continues to make the England shirt feel significantly less heavy than any other manager since Robson and Venables after what was a very poor two decades of under performance in world cups and the euros.

Do I think England could win it? Well clearly they could after their strong showings in the last two major tournaments and that opening win. There will be harder challenges ahead, especially for the defence. If they play to form I fancy Brazil with their potent attack including Neymar, Vincius Jr and Richarlison, who has seven goals in his last six internationals. France also look strong, despite losing key players to injury. Argentina lost their opening game with Saudi Arabia - one of the big world cup upsets - but I expect they will still have enough to qualify from their group. However I don't expect them to go all the way as (and I have witnesses who will confirm I said this last week) Messi is aging and fading and anyway he never turns up for world cups. I know, I know he got four goals and a record five man of the match awards in 2014 and was also player of the tournament.  But I really don't know how. He didn't make the FIFA All Star team for the tournament and for me he was underwhelming. The award should surely have gone to one of the winning German team, who spectacularly demolished home country Brazil 7-1 in the semi-final.

But back to the Holland-Sandbrook podcast. I learned very many things from it about football and the history of a lot of footballing countries, plus a multitude of fascinating stories about the background to the competition, the personalities that have featured large in it and oodles of terrific trivia. Here are just a few examples:

• The 1954 world cup was branded as a "reconciliation" world cup after world war 2. Indeed the British FAs had campained for Germany to be readmitted (they and Japan had been excluded in 1950 for, as Sandbrook put it, "bad behaviour off the pitch"). But after Germany (West Germany strictly speaking) beat the fabulous Hungarian team of Puskas et al to win that competition, the president of the German FA Peco Bauwens held a celebration in Munich, in the rebuilt version of the very bier keller where Hitler had staged his attempted putsch in 1923. In his speech he suggested that the German team was a fine example of the Führerprinzip (Fuhrer principle) in action. A hoo-ha followed with the West German Chancellor Adenauer disowning the remarks and East Germany crowing that its western sibling was still fascist. You just can't keep politics and sport apart!
• The surprise package of the 1966 competition was North Korea, who beat Italy on the way to the quarter finals. This was the first world cup where we got to see much of the action, with live coverage and highlights. North Korea and their goal scoring hero Pak Doo-ik were the darlings of the tournament.  They played their group matches at Middlesbrough's long gone Ayresome Park. In 2002 a group of the 1966 North Korean players visited Middlesbrough, the housing estate where Ayresome Park stood and the new Riverside stadium. Subsequently teams from Middlesbrough have played in North Korea, including two matches by Middlesbrough Ladies FC. Middlesbrough is one of the few places in the world to have a cordial civic relationship with North Korea.
• We all chuckled along with commentator John Motson in 1974 when Zaire's Mwepu Ilunga ran out of a defensive wall at a free kick and hoofed the ball away upfield before Brazil's Rivelino could take it. He got a yellow card (they were new in 1970) and Motty conjectured that the naive Africans didn't know the rules. Which was quite presumptious seeing as they were the only African team to qualify and had won the African Cup of Nations in the same year. The truth is actually more sinister. Zaire's fierce dictator Mobutu Sese Seko had invested heavily in football, forcefully repatriating some players who had moved abroad. After the team qualified he rewarded them with houses and new VW cars . However, in the finals  they lost 2-0 to Scotland and then calamatously 9-0 to Yugolsavia. Mobutu ordered several of his security guards to go to Germany and threaten the team: if they lost the final game, which was only against Brazil, by more than three goals they wouldn't be allowed back into Zaire. (Sandbrook and Holland claimed they may have been told they would be killed on returning home). At the time of the "hilarious" free kick Zaire were losing 2-0 in the second half, looking rattled and doing everything they could to waste time. Which is why Ilunga took the yellow card for booting the ball away. It worked: they lost 3 nil, Mobutu lost interest in football and concentrated on boxing, bringing the Foreman-Ali "Rumble in the Jungle" to Zaire later that year.
• England, having boycotted the first three world cups, went to Brazil in 1950 and lost 1-0 to the United States in what is retrospectively regarded as one of the biggest shock results in world cup finals. But Holland and Sandbrook said that, at the time, it got practically zero press coverage. Only one USA journalist travelled to Brazil. His newspaper wouldn't pay for him to go so he went on holiday. Hardly any reports he filed got published and no-one would have paid any attention to the shock result. But in Britain also it hardly made a ripple. There were British reporters in Brazil but post war newsprint was expensive, newspapers were limited in size and there wasn't much space for sport. The shock defeat was effectively kept out of the papers by an even bigger shock result: the English cricket team lost in the Caribbean for the first time. Moreover, the English just didn't see the world cup as important: it was viewed a bit akin to a summer tour and not given any more status than a friendly. It took the first ever loss for England at home to a non-British or Irish side, the 6-3 defeat by Hungary at Wembley in 1953 to shake the home nations out of their complacency. Even though Hungary was the world number one ranked team at the time.

And it's USA next up for England. Ooh it's an interesting competition already!

The link for the Holland/Sandbrook podcast opening episode on the world cup is given below; it's well worth a listen.

PS despite being a football fan actually I think the Olympics is the greatest show on earth

PPS And here are some nostalgic photos of footballs. I remember the impact the hexagonal/pentagonal Adidas design had on us teenagers in 1970 (bottom, centre)

The Rest Is History podcast is on Amazon, Spotify and Apple podcasts (and probably elsewhere); The Amazon link to episode 252 is https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/c2be0e23-f4aa-44b5-af18-5464b0206ffd/episodes/046b1e7e-6dbf-48f5-aad0-8884533e87ce/the-rest-is-history-252-the-world-cup-british-imperialism-south-american-rivalries-and-mussolini

Remembering Robbie Fowler's support for the Mersey dockers, The Penny University 27 March 2021; https://ayewellhmm.wordpress.com/2021/03/27/remembering-robbie-fowlers-support-for-the-mersey-dockers/

Homeosexuality: the countries where it is illegal to be gay BBC 12 May 2021;  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-43822234

The 1966 World Cup heroes and the origins of an unlikely international friendship. Koryo Tours blog (Koryo tours is your go to company if you want to go to Pyongyang). https://koryogroup.com/blog/the-1966-world-cup-heroes-and-the-origins-of-an-unlikely-international-friendship-part-ii

Exposing The Myth: Why Zaire’s Infamous 1974 World Cup Free-Kick Was Far From Comical The Sportsman 19 June 2019. https://www.thesportsman.com/articles/exposing-the-myth-why-zaire-s-infamous-1974-world-cup-free-kick-was-far-from-comical

Rod Liddle, Sunday Times 20 November 2022. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/it-felt-as-if-gianni-infantino-was-auditioning-for-the-latest-john-lewis-christmas-advert-mv3btfnv8 had the statistics for countries that allow same sex marriage and criminalise homosexuality

A full list of countries that criminalise homosexuality can be seen at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-43822234; Homosexuality: the countries where it is ilegal to be gay, BBC 12 May 2021

Showbaiting

What do you think of footballers showboating? I ask because there have been a couple of well publicised instances from Premier League players this season which have confirmed the disdain that most fans and pundits seem to hold for such antics.

The more recent case was when Manchester United's Brazilian, Antony, executed a 720 degree spin in their Europa League match against Sheriff Tiraspol. Pundits called it embarrassing. Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville - not the most gifted, silky skilled players I note - weighed in and Paul Scholes (a player to be fair) called him a "clown". According to the BBC Antony said he was "not going to stop doing what got me where I am" while his manager Ten Hag said he will "correct" the Brazilian if the player is unnecessarily showboating.

It seemed pretty pointless as the score was 0-0 in the first half and there was no defender near him: the nearest just stood off him and watched, presumably expecting him to fall over or something. Antony then attempted a pass under no pressure which went directly out of play. You can see it here together with his manager's reaction.

The earlier example was when Richarlison, also Brazilian, played keepy uppies near the corner flag after coming on late in the game as a sub in Tottenham's 2-0 Premier League win at Nottingham Forest in August. Richi was unceremoniously booted up in the air by Forest's Brennan Johnson who got booked.

After the Richarlison incident I came across a football themed youtube channel, HITC Sevens and listened to a fascinating analysis by the presenter; I think it's Alfie Potts Harmer. It's a good listen but 23 minutes long so let me give you the headlines. Potts argued that the reaction to Richi's keepy-uppies, which included lots of comments on the lines "deserves to get his leg broken", was not only not logical but rather deranged, speaks to some emotional problems in the British psyche and revealed more about modern Britain than any focus group or opinion poll could. Only "an over-emotional man-baby" would think it ok to resort to violence in such a situation. 

Harmer noted that the Brits have a very strange view about fairness and entertainment. We still resent Maradona's "hand of god" cheating but we'd been kicking ten bells out of him all match up to then. We also seem to think showboating is something foreigners do, but he noted that the English, as well as inventing football, probably invented showboating. Going back to the 1930s and 40s Len Shackleton stood over the ball pretending to comb his hair and Raich Carter would stop and invite opponents to try to get the ball off him, like a boxer holding his fists down and saying "try and hit me". The powers that be didn't necessarily take to such antics even then. An England selector asked why Shackleton had been left out of the team once said the game was being played at Wembley, not the London Palladium. Shackleton was nicknamed the Clown Price of Football. Towards the end of his career Carter was quoted as saying "I used to be arrogant but I've matured and grown more tolerant; now I'm just conceited".

Moving in to the era of players I've seen, George Best would beat a player, let him get back, then beat him again. That was an era when many British players would still deploy their skills that way. Tony Currie, Stan Bowles, Frank Worthington and my favourite, Alan Ball. I remember watching Ball on quite a few occasions pretend to sit on the ball if defenders stood off him, inviting them to lunge for the ball whereupon he would stand up and take it away from them. He also liked a "Rabona", a Spanish word used to describe the act of crossing the kicking leg behind the standing leg to play the ball. The first recorded deployment of this trick was by an Argentinian player, Ricardo Infante, in 1948 (says Wikipedia).

I only heard the term "rabona" many years later; as far as I was concerned it was an "Alan Ball" and called the similar dance step in the tango such when Mrs H and I first learned it. Ball would only get up to such antics when Everton were at least two or three goals ahead in a match. After all, the team's manager was the rather pragmatic Harry Catterick. And he may well only have done it in home matches.

Another Everton favourite from just a few years later was a notable exponent of showboating: Duncan Mackenzie. You can watch him keeping the ball off an increasingly irritated Stoke team in an F A Cup tie in 1977 here. The crowd loved Mackenzie but the utilitarian manager Gordon Lee sold him. I recall reading Mackenzie saying that perhaps the final straw was when he rounded a goalkeeper and, with the goal at his mercy, waited for a defender to get back so he could nutmeg him to score.

That probably is taking it a bit far. As a player I was with Ten Hag: I didn't like to see my team  mates doing "unnecessary" showboating. If we're winning several to nil, then fine. It can demoralise an opposition. But it can also motivate them, which is why you don't do it in a close game, or unless there's a point to it. Which there was in Richarlison's case. Richarlison's showboating was fully justified and it worked. He was down in the corner in stoppage time wasting time and it drew a foolish foul from the opposition, wasting a lot more time. Very effective. And entertaining. Though I could also identify 100% with the Forest player who booted him up in the air.

Tricks can sometimes be absolutely the right thing to do in some situations and amount simply to a skill, like Cruyff's exquisite trademark turn. I played with a young forward who practised this until he could pull it off to order and used it to very good effect in many matches. Which isn't showboating, though it could still get you kicked in those days. And I wasn't so happy seeing John Stones do it in his own penalty area playing for Everton.

Ball's rabona was normally played with his right foot to pass from inside right out to his right winger, not in a pressure situation, just to show off. But sometimes it's the right skill for the moment. I was never much impressed by Erik Lamela, one of the "magnificent seven" that Andre Villas-Boas acquired for Spurs with the Gareth Bale transfer money. (I'm fairly sure ex Spurs chairman Alan Sugar said something like "we were told we'd sold Elvis and signed the Beatles but actually it was the seven dwarfs". However, Lamela remarkably scored twice with outstanding rabonas in his time at Spurs, once against Arsenal, the other in a Europa League match. They are both stunning goals and were arguably the correct skill to get the ball into the net most quickly in the particular situations while also deceiving the defenders and keeper.  The goal against Arsenal won the 2021 Puskas award (no, I'd never heard of it either). You can see them here (v Arsenal 2021) and here, Europa League 2015. Super stuff.

Of course Antony and Richarlison are both Brazilians, but I understand that, even in Brazil, showboating can be frowned on. Football has become so serious! But since the days of Bally, Curran, Bowles, Mackenzie etc English footballers have pretty well totally cut out the fancy stuff - more professional, yes but at the same time not seemingly able to express themselves and deliver performances on the big occasions. I can't help thinking that these things are linked. Confidence bordering on a hint of arrogance is necessary to deliver on the big stage; just look at the England men's cricket teams. When Kevin Pietersen started executing reverse sweeps many were horrified (and I thought it far too risky). But now it's a standard shot, along with the outrageous ramp shot which Buttler and Root are so good at. There's a point to those shots of course - they access areas of the field that aren't protected and make it even harder for opposition to know where to bowl and how to place their field.

And for me that's the key thing. You pull out the tricks to reinforce your superiority over the opposition, so you only do it when you're winning, not like Antony. But it also depends which side of the showboating you're on: you like to see your own team doing it but not when it's done against them. So I quite like seeing a bit of showboating Richarlison style, not so much Antony style. That's possibly because, as a player with a very limited skill set, I admired those with the skill and bravery to pull off tricks like step overs (not that they count as showboating). Though I did beat a man with a Cruyff turn once in a practice match and I practised rabonas to the point where I could take penalties that way in five a side, usually successfully unless the keeper is very alert because your foot movements bamboozle him. 

But if anyone tried a Cruyff turn on me when I'd converted from a schoolboy forward to a defender in men's football then I felt they were asking for a kicking. And Mrs H can confim they sometimes got it.

P. S. I realised I typed "showbaiting" in the title and decided that, per Brian Eno's dictum, I should honour my error as my true intention. It works quite well, don't you think?

PPS here are some pictures of players executing rabonas:

You can see Antony's daft 720 degree spin and Ten Hag's reaction at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxphfufptdI. The BBC item is at https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/63432024

You can hear the fascinating (but 23 minutes long) piece on HITC Sevens at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCqePRonP78

You can see Duncan Mackenzie playing keep ball all on his own at https://youtu.be/kpZ6og5QjSg and read an impassioned tribute to him at https://taleoftwohalves.uk/columnist/favourite-player-cult-hero-football-genius-duncan-mckenzie-everton

Erik Lamela's fabulous rabona goals: see  the one against Arsenal over and over again at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTidIMc9VPE and the 2015 Europa league effort at https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=420906038995112. Amazing he could do this so well but not be very good at much else!

Can the inflation genie be put back in its bottle?

This is the promised/threatened third in my trilogy of posts on the economy, this time on inflation. It strikes me that no-one less than half way through their career will have experienced significant inflation, while those of us who lived, worked and had a mortgage through the 1970s remember all too well what an economy in its grip feels like.

For myself and Mrs H it wasn't all bad, indeed rather the opposite. We bought our first house in 1975 with a mortgage at an interest rate of 11%. There were 18 changes of interest rates over the next 18 months when the rate peaked at 15%*. This could have been very tough as I had fibbed just a little on my earnings to secure the necessary loan, saying that the overtime shown on my payslips was guaranteed, which it wasn't. We also started off with no washing machine, three handed down armchairs and a home made coffee table. We had a dining suite donated to us by Mrs H's grandmother but nowhere to put it as the carpet in the living/dining room stank of cat pee and had to be thrown out. We couldn't afford to replace it for many months. We had a rented TV but the house never did have central heating while we lived there. I know, I know boxes on us feet, violins etc.

But this was an era of a wage-price spiral and we were on the right side of it. It was a time of government price and wage controls, introduced by Heath's Tories, which Labour changed to voluntary restraint in its "social compact" with the unions after the elections in 1974. I recall getting a satisfactory pay rise at my first ever annual pay review in April 1974 (I still have the letter - it was 11%). We were all pleasantly surprised when, in October, pay letters were issued out of the blue and I got a further 20%! The company had acted because it was concerned that formal pay restraint might be brought back in and that it could be trapped with uncompetitive wages (one of the reasons pay controls don't work). Things went on in much the same way: in the 12 months after we took out the mortgage my pay went up by 50%. Mrs H did even better - hers doubled, by the simple tactic of getting her annual pay rise and then moving job for a further rise to a company that had still to make its annual adjustment. In three years as well as my annual increase I had a further three pay rises thrown at me. I was of course in the early stages of my career so this included some significant progression as well as annual rises but looking back those percentages look extraordinary.

When we took out a bigger mortgage to move house in 1980 I recall saying to Mrs H that the recently elected Mrs Thatcher had said she was going to kill inflation and noting "that might not actually be good for us right now, we need this mortgage whittled down by pay rises. But it won't happen". (It did, but not quickly, fortunately for us. And then they caused it to surge back. It wasn't really fully under control in the UK until the 1990s. See Was the Tory reputation for competency a myth? from 30 October).

So this all seemed hunky dory to us but it wouldn't have been so great for many others. And so, in different circumstances, with retirement looming and with it the end of annual pay reviews I've been concerned about the risk of high inflation returning since the 2008 financial crisis. I instinctively thought that the mysterious smoke and mirrors of quantitative easing might actually equate to old fashioned printing of money. Oh, I understood the theory alright - that the central banks were acquiring assets which could later be sold, so there was a sorely needed injection of liquidity without a one way irreversible injection of cash. But would it actually work that way? It did and inflation remained low, with interest rates held down at historically low levels for so long that people under about 40 had never known any other financial environment. 

I eventually concluded that everything was probably going to be ok, though also that I would be happier once the QE process was reversed and the assets sold back into the market, a process known as quantitative tightening (QT). And also with some residual nerves that a large debt hangover from the enormous budget deficits we had run always tends to supress growth.

But then we had a global pandemic, resulting in even larger deficits and higher debt and deferring the start of QT. I suspected that the re-opening of the world economy after the massive perturbation of covid and its lockdowns would stimulate inflation.  It seemed inevitable that there would be huge disruption to supplies while demand could jump quickly back to previous levels. Or even higher as companies tried to rebuild stocks. We also had the effect of what in the USA became known as the "great resignation" as lots of people decided they quite liked a different work-life balance or that they could get by quite happily without going back to their old, inconvenient or uncomfortable job and would rather do something more congenial, even if it paid a bit less, but allowed them to spend more time with their families or just doing more of what they wanted. Millions disappeared from the workforce in the USA, UK and Europe. Supply chains were disrupted in many ways and for many reasons.

When demand switched back on, the price of shipping went through the roof and shortages put a traditional upward pressure on prices in line with the only other immutable law besides the second law of thermodynamics (i.e. the law of supply and demand) it seemed inevitable to me that inflation would return. 

So I snorted when the US Federal Reserve pronounced that inflation would be "transitory". I could see the argument that things would gradually return to normal: the savings many of the more fortunate had built up would be finite, stocks would be rebuilt and demand would return to more normal levels. But I was concerned that a wage-price spiral might take hold, especially when I read that some unions in the USA were only accepting wage settlements if they included COLA provisions: automatic cost of living adjustment contingent on the level of inflation. This is a step on a behavioural slope which says things like "buy now, it will only be more expensive next month". 

This of course leads to demands from relatively well paid folk like train drivers for inflation linked pay rises which, when you think about it, amounts to letting the devil take the hindmost. The rail sector is state subsidised so their larger pay rise reduces the amount of money available for other things like protecting benefits**. When times are tough there may be falling living standards for a while and surely the better paid should not be protected in those circumstances. I include the about to strike nurses in that too (their pay is above average for the UK).

Moreover, since the Fed made it's eventually retracted prediction about the inflation surge being transitory, Putin's invasion of Ukraine caused a dramatic increase in what were already high energy prices post-covid as well as intefering with supply chains for fertilisers and staple foods. And President Biden has chosen, as Irwin Stelzer put it, to pour petrol on the fire by launching multi-trillion dollar spending programmes on an economy unable to meet the current levels of demand, while the Fed directs a water hose at the market.

I paint a bleak picture but I accept I may be being pessimistic as inflation does appear to be levelling off or falling in the USA and that may be a harbinger for western economies in general. Irwin Stelzer noted a month ago that trans-Pacific cargo rates were down 75% from last year, for example.

But I remain uneasy that the Truss-Kwarteng special financial operation deferred the start of the Bank's quantitative tightening. It has since started but at a tiny level, only 99.9% still to go. The days of Trussonomics were brief but it did introduce us to the odd situation of the Treasury trying to pump up growth by fiscal loosening while the Bank tried to damp down the econmomy by monetary tightening. While this seemed strange it's an artefact of having an independent central bank and wouldn't seem unusual to the Americans for whom the opposite policy directions being taken by their administration and central bank noted above are not unprecedented.

And the cynic in me doubts the resolve of western democratic governments to take the unpopular decisions necessary to quell inflation quickly. Ian Cowie opined recently that the massive debts run up by governments around the world to prevent the coronavirus prompting a global depression can never be repaid because electorates will not vote for the necessary spending cuts or tax hikes, but inflation offers a stealthy way to reduce the real value of the debts in what amounts to a slow motion bank robbery, where the victims are risk-averse savers. A bit like my mortgage getting whittled away by inflation in the 1970s.

Stelzer is more optimistic; he thinks the good news trumps the bad. He says every ill affecting the USA is man-made, created by a policy error. America contains all the oil it needs if it would allow it to be drilled for. It can reduce its deficits if its politicians decided to do so. It has a large entrepreneurial class capable of producing the answer to global warming, is a magnet for the world's best and has a military that would make enemies tremble "if they thought we knew how to use it". All that needs to be done is to do as Nike advises - "just do it".

I wish I was as confident that Sunak and Hunt could be free in a single bound. It looks a bit trickier than that to me. I expect they will try to balance the political unpopularity of tax rises and spending cuts with the need to restore the public finances and go only as hard as they dare. I can but hope - probably in vain - they will make clear that everyone who is in the better off half of the population (like train drivers, doctors, nurses and teachers for a start) will have to feel a bit of a pinch. As they won't be that brave, inflation will reduce but maybe only gradually, running the risk that it gets entrenched. But hopefully not like it was in the 1970s. 

Back then, of course, we also had energy crises. If energy prices stay at current levels inflation will fall back but there will still be a lot less money for everything else because we'll all still be paying a lot more to heat our homes. The rate of inflation isn't the only thing that matters, actual cost levels do also.

Fair warning: I've been meaning to write about energy for quite a while...

* No, I don't remember this in detail of course, though I do remember that our first mortgage had a double digit interest rate. The rates recommended by the Building Societies Association from 1939 to 2013 are available from the BSA (https://www.bsa.org.uk/BSA/files/5c/5c180498-5e52-4a41-b022-5821c25f3cbd.pdf)

** I realise the rail dispute is also about "protecting jobs". But rail travel is down, why should all rail  jobs necessarily be protected?

Irwin Stelzer's weekly American Account column appears in the Sunday Times.

Ian Cowie's Personal Account column on investing appears in the Sunday Times Money section.

Albanians at large

If it wasn't a serious matter who is Home Secretary and what kind of job they are doing, I'd be amused by how 'Cruella' Braverman has made Priti Patel seem a paragon of moderation and competence. However, I have some advice which might just help her.

Like many I was bemused to see just how many Albanians have crossed the channel in small boats this year. According to gov.uk statistics over 11,000 between May and September, 42% of the total, contributing significantly to the difficulty of housing them in a proper and dignified manner while their asylum claims are processed. 95% of the Albanian arrivals are male and therefore unaccompanied. 

This has been a significant shift in the racial mix of the migrant flow across the channel: only 50 Albanians arrived in 2020. Remarkably just this year's total represents around 1% of all Albanian working age men. I've read reports saying Tirana feels deserted and the Beeb claims to have found a place where 70% of the local population has already left for the UK.

In the Beeb article referenced below the reporters pretended to be candiate migrants in Albania and in France. It all sounded easy though the Albanians have had to establish links with the Iraqi Kurdish gangs who currently have the franchise for the small boat ride business based in the notorious French camps. The gendarmerie is concerned that the Albanians will set up their own people carrying business and gang rivalry could erupt.

BBC say that migrants are told they will be arrrested in Britain, must apply for asylum and advise them to say they have debts or other problems. What? Since when was escaping debt, imaginary or not, grounds for asylum?

According to gov.uk the success rate for Albanian applications is much lower than the overall rate, 53% v 76%, and lower still for single males. I imagine few of those the tide has washed in over the summer have been processed; once they are those stats may change.

Albania is regarded as a safe country and gov.uk notes it is designated as presenting 'no serious risk of persecution of persons entitled to reside in that state or part of it'.

All of which prompted me to tell my buddy Democracy Man "they're taking the piss".

Then I read the BBC reports which say they were told by one recent Albanian small boat arrival that the majority of the young men he met in the camps planned to work in the Albanian cocaine and cannabis networks in the UK. A former migrant, who worked illegally in the UK for a decade, told them half the migrant staff on his construction site were lured away by drugs gangs offering higher wages. Which made me amend my judgement to "we're being taken for mugs".

What seems crystal clear is that we need a quicker method to process no brainer asylum cases, whether they are weak or strong. This would also prevent the jackal lawyers spinning out time until it apparently becomes practically impossible to reject applications. Against this background I can understand why the Home Secretary reportedly wants to  be able to deport people without an appeal being heard. After all, it's standard in our justice system to need leave to appeal and some cases must not merit being given that leave.

Anyway, myself and Mrs H have a solution which seems to us to have the beautiful logical coherence of Joseph Heller's Catch 22 and might be helpful.

Asylum seekers identified as Albanian should be asked 'were you trafficked here against your will?' If the answer is 'yes' then, as Albania is a safe country, we'll help you get straight back home. If the answer is 'no' then, as you came here from a safe country and were trying to bypass the legitimate system for asylum claims, we're sending you straight home unless you can show you meet our immigration criteria (genuine doctors welcome, for example). 

In the meantime single Albanian men should be allocated the poorest available accommodation facilities and families from places like Afghanistan prioritised whoever got here first. (Maybe this already happens).

In the medium term we need to inject some emergency resources to clearing the backlog of 100,000 asylum cases else, as noted above, they end up staying anyway.

For the longer term robust rules must be drafted that legal loopholes can't be found in. The more complex they are the easier it is to find loopholes so the criteria need to be simplified. And you don't get legal aid if you are from a safe country, it's not justifiable.

After all what would the French authorities say to a Brit claiming asylum on the grounds that they were being victimised in the UK because of their sexuality or religion? (Or for being in debt!) Short shrift, I'm sure. That's not to say individuals could not have experienced those things, just that these situations are not regarded as being prevalent and inescapable in the UK. Just like Albania.

Whatever you think UK immigration policies should be it sounds as if urgent action must be taken, if only to avoid drug problems becoming even more acute.

We hope you find this advice helpful, Cruella. Now don't do that barrister thing and say it's more complicated than that. For once it really isn't.

PS the Sunday Times (6 Nov) has stats showing that Albanians are the largest single foreign national group in UK prisons. They managed to find a mother and daughter who had flown to Brussels, travelled to France by train and paid traffickers to cross the Channel. The mother claimed to be escaping domestic abuse. A cause for sympathy but not asylum from a safe country

Factsheet: small boat crossings since July 2022, gov.uk

Channel crossings: Albanian migrants recruited to the UK by gangs, bbc.com 4 November 2022

Mr Bond I presume

This is the second of a trilogy of posts (how pretentious, sorry) primarily 'inspired' by the current economic situation. It follows on from my question Was the Tory reputation for competency a myth? (30 October) in which I pondered the oddity that Truss and Kwarteng overlooked Mrs Thatcher's tenet "you can't buck the market". When they tried, sterling and interest rates gave cause for concern but it was the the bond market that bucked Kwarteng out of the saddle. A further factor was the crisis that hit finally salary pension schemes necessitating a Bank of England intervention, where they promised up to £65 billion to buy back government bonds and prevent a 'doom loop' of selling but with a short end date to focus the minds of the politicians on regaining sanity. In the end 'only' £19 billion had to be spent on this emergency form of very specific quantitative easing and the crisis dissipated.

So why are bond markets so important and powerful that they can force a change in government policy when a mini-sterling crisis didn't? Bond markets are normally very boring but one can readily understand why a government like ours with high debt and needing to continue borrowing at a high rate would have a problem if the bond markets jacked up interest rates or, in the limit, even declined to lend. Nevertheless I found an article by Jill Treanor in The Times informative.  She noted that historian Niall Ferguson claimed that two hundred plus years ago at the time of Waterloo Nathan Rothschild was as important as Wellington to victory as he had backed the bond issue that funded the British war effort. During the 23 year war with France Britain's debt had doubled to the size of the economy - roughly where covid has taken it to - and Rothschild became so influential it was believed he could dictate which ministers were hired or fired.

The bond market was also critical in the US Civil War. The confederate states issued bonds linked to the price of cotton, their mainstay crop. At first the price of cotton rose and the value of the bonds rose with it. But they fell when supplies came in from other countries. The effect on the confederate states was ruinous. They printed more money which fuelled inflation and the confederate dollar, which was a promisory note with no assets behind it, collapsed to a value of six cents in gold, becoming worthless in defeat.

In more recent times American economist Edward Yardeni coined the phrase 'bond vigilantes' to describe investors who sold US government bonds in an attack on the Federal Reserve's policies. By the 1990s Bill Clinton's campaign manager James Carville quipped that, rather than the president or pope he would choose to be reincarnated as the bond market because 'you can intimidate everybody'. This was after the bond market caused Clinton's ambitious spending plans to be reined back which was fortuitous for the administration as it set the scene for sound economics and the legacy of strong growth which is very much part of the positive element of Clinton's reputation.

In normal times governments issue bonds, investors buy them as they are amongst the safest places to put money, and the rest of us don't notice. How can this market suddenly exercise so much power? Knowledgeable readers can skip the next bit (or critique where I've over-simplified it). Say a government has issued loads of bonds at a face value of £1 yielding 2% i.e. paying a 'coupon' (interest rate) of 2% a year for a period of maybe 10 years. Having bought these bonds, investors don't have to keep them, they can be traded so have a price which can vary up or down. If uncertainty arises, for example because higher inflation threatens to reduce the value of the returns (and the £1 when it is eventually repaid) or in the limit because the market thinks the government might default on its payment obligations, the value of the bonds will fall. As a simplistic example if the value fell to 50p that 2% interest rate on the face value of the bonds would become worth 4% to someone buying the bond at the new price. Even if the Bank of England didn't change base rates interest rates in the market would be affected. The interest rate at which the government could issue new bonds would have to increase - why buy bonds paying 2% when you could buy them yielding 4% and get more money back at the end? (You'd be be buying at 50p and expecting to get back £1 at the end of the term). Only governments that didn't need to borrow would be unaffected.

The bond markets are entirely dispassionate in wielding this power. They have long since not been driven by a single person with the influence of Nathan Rothschild and there is no political dogma driving the many individual decisions that underpin a market shift. All that matters is whether decision makers think their money (or the money of the investors like pension funds they are charged with growing) is safe and earning a worthwhile return compared with other options available to them. When the market ditches gilts it is expressing a view about the future probabilities of inflation and default. Foreign sellers are also expressing a view about the future exchange rate of sterling. Kwarteng's pronouncements led to a step change in those views (fears?) of the future. As Treanor noted it was puzzling that Kwarteng, a graduate in classics and history with a PhD in economic history, seemed so ignorant of the need for a chancellor to have the confidence of the market, especially the bond market.

All that seems pretty obvious, if not to Kwarteng and Truss. But returning to the pensions problem, I wondered why that was so acute to need urgent Bank intervention. Oliver Shah noted that the blow up in defined benefit schemes had been caused by their exposure to "liability driven investing". "Eh, what's that?" I thought, feeling a bit dim but, reading on I smelt a rat. Shah noted LDI is a "leveraged product designed to juice up returns without equity risk". He said a small number of voices had flagged that it was an accident waiting to happen, but it still seemed to take institutions by surprise.

I'm very familiar with the way defined benefit (DB) aka "gold-plated" final salary schemes work. They have three-yearly reviews to show that they can meet their future liabilities to pay out to their pensioners. These reviews have often meant misery for the companies behind the pension schemes for around 20 years now as what the individual employees pay in is specified and so the companies have to pay more in to make up any shortfalls between projected assets and projected liabilities for the scheme. They also have to have enough ready cash to meet the monthly cost of pensions in payment going forward. They usually invest in a wide range of assets but with a mix between equities (for growth) and bonds (for certainty) together with smaller proportions of other assets such as property and commodities. This mix gives an automatic degree of hedging against many scenarios. Normally the performance of equities and bonds are inverse correlated: when one group is doing badly the other tends to be doing well. But not always. Commodities, gold being a classic example, are often poor investments in terms of returns but when times are tough and equities and bonds are under-performing, money often floods into gold, boosting its price. It's rare that an ill wind blows all parts of the market no good. This is all well known, of course, and is the basis for spreading risk in a portfolio. 

One of the particular risks defined benefit pension schemes have to contend with is inflation. Depending on how their pensions are indexed they can have to pay out a lot more in £  than expected for the money employees and pensioners have already paid in. This is why DB schemes can be extremely expensive and as rare as hen's teeth outside the public sector*.  But LDI is a product, something that these pension schemes buy to manage risk (or, per Oliver Shah, "juice up returns"). How come I hadn't heard of it? 

I felt better a week later when I read Ed Conway's column. A veteran analyst called Albert Edwards (must be veteran with a name like that!) said:

Before this I had no idea what LDI was. And I've worked in the finacial market for more than 40 years."

He went on to say:

But that misses the point. When you have QE and low interest rates people do stupid things. They build up structures on the back of low volatility. Then, when you get a bit of volatility and rising interest rates, suddenly you're in trouble".

The trouble the DB pension schemes hit was actually remarkably simple. The first thing to be clear about is that Liability Driven Investment is not a strategy, it's a product sold to pension funds by asset managers such as Blackrock, Legal and General and Schroders. It's a kind of insurance to help pension funds balance their assets and liabilities against unexpected moves in the markets and ensure they have enough cash to meet the payments they guarantee to their pensioners. There was £1.6 trillion tied up in LDI by 2021, which sounds a lot but is actually a small part of the assets of these pension schemes. That was part of the puzzle - the overall funding of the schemes was never prejudiced. This was a classic liquidity/cash flow crunch, just what the LDI product was supposedly created to avoid. How come?

The pension funds have to post collateral (readies effectively) against their LDI derivatives in case they turn sour. The amount required rises and falls with the value of the underlying assets which the derivatives track. Interest rates had been steadily inching up in a well signposted way for months, requiring the funds to cough up more collateral but over a time period that allowed them to find the money. But when Kwarteng launched what he denied was a mini budget (so let's call it 'special financial operation') bond rates soared over a few trading sessions. This surge triggered emergency collateral calls on pension funds in a matter of hours. They struggled to find the cash and had to flog whatever assets they could get their hands on to sell quickly. I read about traders frantically liquidating assets, without even having a certain price, as panic set in. Ironically one of the assets they could sell was government bonds, putting further pressure on their price.

The good news is the Bank's intervention worked and the pension funds are no less healthy overall than they were. The bad news is that the markets remain jittery, there's a colossal amount of debt around post-covid, interest rates are increasing at a speed and scale unseen in many years (probably never seen by any traders under 45) and there could be more unexploded bombs lurking beneath the surface of the financial system. No-one is sure where the next one will detonate. Complacency has grown in financial markets as central banks have nearly always come to the rescue over several decades since the US Fed intervened to save a compnay called LTCM (Long -Term Financial Capital Management) in 1998 - another derivatives fiasco I think. This is the problem known as a lack of 'moral hazard' which encourages too much risk taking.

Which is one of many reasons why too much debt is a bad thing and Kwarteng and Truss were foolhardy in the extreme. "Liz Truss accelerated something that was already under way" one expert told Ed Conway. The reckoning was already coming but her ineptitude accelerated it. Like anyone whose credit card has maxed out you can't go out on a spending spree and getting that debt properly under control will take a long time and will constrain options in the meantime. 

Which is Rishi Sunak's 'profound economic crisis'. More on that and, in particular, inflation in part III.

* Actually some very clever actuaries managed to prove to the government actuary in the mid 1990s that inflation proofing pensions need not be prohibitively expensive. The public sector corporation I worked for was accordingly privatised with employees having the option of retaining a fully inflation-proofed pension. Within 5 years the employer's contributions had soared from a "holiday" level of 4% through the 7.5% standard rate to 11% and beyond. Within another decade the company had collapsed and the pension scheme had to be bailed out by the PPF. Beware very clever people! 

Sources: (besides my own sketchy and unreliable knowledge):

Political leaders can never outwit the bond titans. Jill Treanor, The Times 15 October 2022

Incompetent Truss has thrown the Bank's big sexy turtle a lifeline. Oliver Shah, Sunday Times 16 October 2022. (Andrew Bailey's predecessor, Mark Carney, dubbed him the big sexy turtle if you are wondering. No I don't want to think about it either. Shah says Bailey has a hapless quality that led a seasoned investor to say "if he can find a dog turd, he just stands in it".  That's as maybe but he's had a better time lately than the government or pension fund managers.

The debt timebomb that blew up Truss. Ed Conway, Sunday Times 23 October 2022. This was the latest of many impressive columns by Conway, Sky's economics editor. He is proving a master at explaining issues from this one to how to get to net zero in understandable terms. But I still had to look up the next source to confirm that LDIs are like insurance.

Explainer: what is LDI? Liability Driven Investment strategy explained. Reuters, 12 October 2022