REPORTING OF PROPERTY & HOUSING ISSUES

Whilst my previous post noted that media reporting of economic and labour issues had been in decline since the 1980s, the subjects of property and housing, and particularly the latter, have attracted more and more media attention, sometimes, it seems, to the exclusion of all other news. The present furore over the Government's proposed changes to housing benefit, following an earlier announcement to cut funding to housing associations and expressed desire to phase out social housing illustrate this very well.

In stating my provisional support for social housing, I also want to share my experience of some its problems through recounting a short history of the flat next door to my former London home.
Soon after purchasing this property, the owner "inherited" the tenancy to a nearby council flat into which he then moved, leasing his own flat to the local authority. A range of housing benefit claimants were placed in this property, one of whom, an Irish lady, also had access to another nearby council flat, and so sublet the one bedroom flat next to me to a large family from Nigeria. At various points, I drew the attention of the local authority to what was clearly housing benefit fraud, and they usually acted on the matter. Incidentally, I owned the property in which I lived, although it was suggested to me on more than one occasion that I was a council tenant, possibly because other owners in the block had entered into arrangements similar to my neighbour.

So we come back to another subject which has received much attention in recent years: regulation. It is the regulation - from policy to enforcement - of property and housing which really needs to be tackled by politicians and in the media, so that "issues of the moment", no matter how important, can be objectively considered in a wider context, and people like the Mayor of London do not have to resort to using highly intemperate language.

However, London does indeed have a particular set of housing issues, some of which have been adequately covered elsewhere, so I don't proposed to dwell upon them here. One issue which has not been fully covered in the media relates to my previous post on "labour issues": low wages. London is producing a great many low paid private sector jobs, many of which are directly in highly paid-sectors such as banking, or in services linked to these. Instead, therefore, of paying some of their employees increasingly high amounts, might I suggest that City institutions provide housing for their less well-paid but nevertheless essential workers.

With regard to the very high levels of housing benefit paid to residents in some areas of London, I would also suggest that this is as much a problem of the type of buy-to-let market which has developed in London, as of individual recipients of state support. To put it bluntly, the beneficiaries of large housing benefit payouts are as much, if not more so, the owners of the properties themselves: something the media, once again, has not properly acknowledged.

REPORTING OF ECONOMIC AND LABOUR ISSUES

Having given vent to "My Inner Yahoo" - a creature of Swiftian satire rather than the new media kind - in my previous post, readers should be warned that I shall be writing in a highly serious vein today. Nevertheless, my critique of Britain's ruling classes - the media, bankers, bureaucrats and politicians et al - will continue.

Last weekend brought media coverage of two symbolically important events, the near demise of "The Work Foundation", due to pensions obligations, and the discovery of Roma children working in the spring onion fields of Worcestershire during a spell of particularly cold autumn weather. The Work Foundation has, as it happens, been rescued by the University of Lancaster, and the young Romanians by the Gangmaster's Licensing Association in conjunction with West Mercia Police.

However, the wider economic and labour context which has thrown these two disparate events into relief has not, and almost certainly will not, receive the receive the media coverage that it merits. The reasons for this are complex: journalism which tackles economic and labour issues in a comprehensive way has been in retreat since the 1980s; people's lifestyles rather than their employment tend to be the focus of media attention; most people are no longer part of an organised labour movement.

Yet there are very good reasons why a more traditional approach to the reporting of economic and labour issues is called for at the present time. For Britain, and England in particular, is not only recovering from a financial crisis induced recession, but also from a period of government under New Labour when is was extremely difficult in matters of the economy, and political economy more specifically, to distinguish facts from fictions, and truth from ideological distortions. Moreover, the British media for much of the decade between 1997-2007 colluded in this process.

Unfortunately, there are strong indications that some within the present Government regard themselves as the "Heir to Blair", and the media management school of political economy as practiced by New Labour but with a somewhat different ideological emphasis, has already sprung back into action. Whether the Secretary of State for Business, Skills and Innovation, and others of a more objective outlook within the Coalition, can steer the nation onto a more broadly-based path to economic regeneration, as distinct from from another financially engineered spurt of growth, remains to be seen.

In the meantime, the media - and indeed the Coalition Government - should pay close attention to "labour issues". Perhaps an analogy with New Labour's attention to matters of property, normally the focus of Conservative policy, is appropriate here, if David Cameron really wants to claim the "Heir to Blair" legacy.

DROP THE DEAD DONKEY

Checking out two news stories on the Telegraph website yesterday, both on the subject of "drops" - the ongoing drop in house prices and a "surprise drop" in consumer spending - I soon found the "Comments" more interesting than the main articles; and particularly this advice from "Jacqui" quoting "Descartes, Discourses on Method": "Accept nothing as true, unless clearly recognised as such." My sentiments exactly !

The "Discourses" revealed that most people weren't at all surprised by the drop in consumer spending, and nor apparently were "the markets" whom the Financial Times report, quoting one lunching - albeit at his desk these days - stockbroker "only respond to surprises". What does "The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street" make of these imprudent hussies of today's markets I wonder, when they can't even register a drop in the sales of lingerie ?

Nevertheless, the price of lingerie has undoubtedly come down in recent years, almost certainly an achievement for "The Spender of Last Resort": to quote another commentator called, I think, "Princesschipchops" (surely the pseudonym of a female impersonator !). My guess is that house prices will follow a similar downwards trend, a bit like those pants that barely covers the buttocks, and which the young seem to favour and the middle aged and over to revile.

If some readers wish to deduce from the above account that I think the bottom may yet fall out of the housing market, please feel free to do so. My own guess is that there are some within the present Government who would like to see a further downward adjustment in property prices, and others who would not: a political reflection for once of the position of wider society. In the meantime, "The Old Lady" should surpise the bankers by witholding money from their hussies.

THE PROBLEMS OF KING & PARLIAMENT

The Governor of the Bank of England's sobering advice of yesterday was blatantly ignored in the unruly behaviour of the UK Parliament today, whose benches sounded as if they had been taken over by a multitude of Swiftian Yahoos when Shadow Chancellor Alan Johnson endeavoured to respond to the speech of George Osborne.

My present feeling is that neither the mild-mannered King nor the unruly Parliament are up to the tasks required of them.

The New Spirit Level of the Real Global Economy

The following article appeared in last Sunday's Telegraph newspaper: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/jeremy-warner/8057069/Jobless-America-threatens-to-bring-us-all-down-with-it.html

Comments are still coming in - some not very politically correct - and along with the original text make for interesting reading. One respondent wonders where all the money is coming from to prop up the United States economy.

The answer of course lies in the labours of overseas workers, and their financial fruits to foreign governments: notably China, increasingly banker to the US.

This is now "The International State We're In", as indicated in my reprinted post of yesterday.

So if political folks over here are getting excited about a new book called "The Spirit Level" - profiled on BBC Radio 4's Analysis yesterday - might I suggest that they also think about the wider international implications of this book's message concerning the benefits of increasing socio-economic equality.

For I would suggest that "The New Spirit Level of the Real Global Economy" is going to be very challenging indeed for many people in the economies of "The Old West", and that their governments, including our own, need to "get real" in responding to this situation sooner rather than later.

THE ECONOMICS OF FAIRY DUST REVISITED

The Coalition Government's policy of continued "quantitative easing" reminds me of a post of six month's ago from my alter ego "The Witch of Worcester": @ http://www.witchofworcester.wordpress.com/

"Writing in The Observer last Sunday (11 April 2010), the former newspaper editor Will Hutton bemoaned the lack of any real content in the current British General Election campaign, and the fact that the euphemistically named government policy of "quantitative easing" - ie pumping £billions of public money to prop up the banking sector - was reinforcing structural problems in the UK economy: namely, the dependence of this on the financial and property sectors.

Commentators on the article - including this one - seemed to have found much to agree with. However, I have to take issue with Hutton's assertion that the British have all been living on fairy dust - ie asset price inflation largely constructed on increasingly sophisticated financial systems, which also provided unprecedented levels of consumer credit - for the past 20 years. For there is another dimension to "The State We're In" - also the title of a book by Hutton published around the time of New Labour's election in 1997. The other side of the story is, of course, the hard labour of people in low wage countries, notably - but not exclusively - China which has produced the cheap, but nevertheless high quality, consumer goods of which we in countries like Britain and the United States are so enamoured. I therefore find it strange that Mr Hutton, now identified with the UK-based Work Foundation, should have apparently overlooked the labours of these multitude of overseas workers in his article, given that their production has underpinned, more substantially than the speculators as it turns out, the long boom from early 1990s to the late noughties.

During this time, Britain has been living not so much on fairy dust - attractive although this analogy may be to one concerned with non-material realties - but on the hard labour, and to a significant extent the savings, of people living in less-developed countries. However, I would argue that this process has not delivered the advantages at home or abroad that are frequently advanced. We are all now aware that the kind of growth which the consumer revolution has brought to China poses not only grave environmental problems for the rest of the world, but has also suppressed, and in some cases destroyed, the development of industries in other countries, including our own. Moreover, there are an increasing number of people within China who would like to see their country take a different development path, which is less reliant upon Western consumers, and the economics of fairy dust."

VICTORY FOR MILIBAND VS THE MEDIA

Congratulations to Ed Miliband and Alan Johnson for foiling the British media's attempt to foist one or other of the Ed Balls-Yvette Cooper husband and wife couple in to the role of Shadow Chancellor, and sending them on their separate ways as shadow spokespersons for Home Affairs and Foreign Policy.

It's great to think that a sense of humour - as well as some common sense - might have been restored to Labour Party politics at long last !

OLD LESSONS OF THE NEW IRISH PROBLEM

This image from the Wikipedia Media Commons depicts the "Famine" sculpture in front of Dublin's financial centre.

Created at the height of the credit boom, when Dublin was amongst the four richest cities in the world, this artwork now symbolises the "feast to famine" cycle of the modern Irish economy.

For some, last week's Irish Government bailout of the banking sector may recall the country's earlier potato famine, but the lessons are much closer to home.

In short, "The New Irish Problem" - as I'm going to call it - shows the folly of a small country adopting the "growth policies" of a much larger one, namely the United States.

For in Ireland, the problems of an overly large and inadequately regulated financial sector as well as a highly speculative property market - problems which the country shares with the United Kingdom - have been made far worse by a lax planning regime and lending to the construction sector, mixed up with some good old fashioned corruption.

UK Coalition Government and "Next Generation Labour" please take note !

For if the previous administration had succeeded in fully implementing its plans for massive volume house-building, the outcome would almost certainly have been akin to the property market collapses in the US, Ireland and Spain, which followed similar policies.

Looking Beyond Britain's Post "Blair Babe" Politics

Image: Stylish fifty something Christine Lagarde, French Minister for Economic Affairs.

News this weekend that Brazil is likely to have a sixty something woman President put in to perspective the election of Miliband Junior as UK Leader of the Opposition. It was also a shame that Diane Abbott apparently lost out to the politics of envy over the choice of a private education for her son, just when I thought such "Old Left" hang-ups had lost out to New Labour.

In the run up to the General Election, I lamented the absence of the "Herd Matriarch" in British politics, as distinct from those "Folletted" women politicians struggling to look forty something when now nearer sixty than fifty. As someone a lot nearer fifty than forty herself, I am actually being cruel to be kind when I say this.

Unfortunately for we more mature ladies looking "ten years younger" has been one of the great aspirations since the Blair Babe years. Indeed, it is now a requirement for "the boys" as well, with baby-faced male politicians like Cameron, Clegg and the Milibands all doing better than their more mature (looking) colleagues.

Poor "old" Alistair Darling had to point out, as in the BBC interviewer's words, he handed over to "the next generation" of Labour politicians that he did not yet have "one foot in the grave". How did British politics arrive at this advanced state of ageism, I wonder, and how can the body politic be restored to a more sensible demographic ?

Were it not the case that European politics still looks like a relatively mature state of affairs, I might have deduced that politicians become younger as their populations age, and younger countries have older leaders, based on the experience of Britain and Brazil, for instance. However, this would not explain the enduring success of "Mother Merkel" in Germany.

No, I think the cult of youth in UK politics must be the new "British Disease", reflecting a society dictated to and dominated by its visual media, including the British Broadcasting Corporation. Something needs to be done about this. Maybe it's high time we more mature women staged a continental-style coup, ejected those hair dye fascists, and sported French-style grey hair.

OH DELHI ! - The Commonwealth Games Fiasco

Like the rest of what I suspect is the world's great silent majority, I do wonder what all the fuss is about sport; and I'm fed up with hearing about the problems of pampered elite athletes, particularly Australian ones and footballers....but that's another story.

So on one level, the Indian Commonwealth Games fiasco is almost welcome: a timely reminder that this a country struggling with development issues of far greater importance than the delivery of yet more world-class sporting facilities.

On the other hand, I very much support the idea of a Commonwealth Games, and hope that this one ultimately delivers a beneficial legacy and the next goes to Glasgow and does the same.

However, a more sensible perspective on sport is essential. People are increasingly comparing the current global obsession with the last days of the Roman Empire, providing a timely reminder to London's classicist Mayor, Boris Johnson, of the wider challenges facing his own country.

BRITAIN'S ECONOMIC SECURITY & FREEDOM

In a week when Britain is "Doing God" with a visit by a Pope who once belonged to the Hitler Youth, it was a timely reminder this lunchtime from one UK military man that our country's economic security should be uppermost in the hearts and minds of every citizen, even if this means less expenditure on high tech weapons.

I'm probably not alone in wondering whether Tony Blair has long term Papal ambitions, even if New Labour "didn't do God", when Alastair Campbell was around anyway. Unfortunately, it did - and didn't do - rather a lot of other things which have potentially compromised the country's economic self-determination.

For a nation which prides itself, rightly or wrongly, on an independent political system, our present predicament should be a concern to all free-thinking people. I believe the Coalition Government is genuine in its aim to deliver economic security, even if I happen to disagree with some of its policies, which - thank the gods ! - I can do freely.

SHRINKING THE STATE OF CUBA

It is interesting that the 2010 TUC Conference should co-incide with an announcement that Cuba is to reduce the number of state employees by around 20 per cent, or 1 million. Apparently, independent enterprise and self-employment are to be encouraged.

I have to say that my recollection of working with public employees in Slovakia shortly after the fall of Communism suggests that these people were better prepared for market realities than some of their British counterparts in 2010.

With hindsight it also seems that some countries in "The New Europe" have made a better job of governing themselves in the period since the collapse of the former Soviet Block, even in the absence of an equivalent of the British media class: or perhaps because of this.

UK TRADE UNIONS: THEY'RE NOT EQUAL TO IT

I'm just reaching the denouement of a superb psychological thriller by the Labour Peer Ruth Rendell, writing as Barbara Vine, called "The House of Stairs". One of the book's central characters, Bell, often uses the expression "I'm not equal to it", although she is quite up to the job of murder.

In addition to being excellent genre fiction, "The House of Stairs" is also a fine novel whose story reflects on the excesses of the 1960s and the perspective of the more sombre 1980s. This is the time frame in which I now want to reflect on the role of trade unions, although my starting point will be the so-called "New Austerity" of 2010.

I began with a literary reference because one of the most sensible comments on "Unequal Britain" came recently from another Labour supporting writer, and former local councillor, Jonathan Myerson. Now I do not usually have much time for Myerson, but when he described the "New Poor" as people who have of necessity more than one low-paid job at the same time, he hit the nail on the head.

Most of these people will not be members of UK trade unions, nor will the comrades meeting this week in Manchester take very much interest in their plight. This is not to deny, however, that the unions have improved the lot of women working in low-paid jobs in the public sector, comprising a key part of its workforce, during New Labour's period in office.

The election of a Labour government in 1997 followed those "wilderness years" of the 1980s when the Party was widely regarded to be unelectable largely because of perceived trade union excesses in the 1970s, culminating in a "Winter of Discontent".

In fact, such excesses went much further back in to the post-war period, and were satirised in that brilliant film "I'm Alright Jack". Even the left leaning comedian, son of Communist parents, and now esteemed writer himself, Alexei Sayle, could acknowledge this in a rather good BBC Radio 4 "Archive Hour" retrospective, which humorously described his own experience of trade union conferences during the 1960s.

Nevetheless, the follies of the British trade union movement are by no means the whole story, nor are strong unions inevitably the enemy of economic productivity, as shown in Germany, even if this narrative has dominated their modern history in this country.

My own response to this narrative has however come full circle. I was skeptical of the movement by the late 1970s, a supporter during the 1980s, sympathetic when New Labour came to power in 1997, and skeptical again by the mid-noughties.

For the election of a Labour Government, with an unprecedented three terms in office, turned out to be a profound missed opportunity for the trade unions, who in turn contributed to the underlying problem of New Labour's lack of a viable political economy for government. In essence, both sold out to unsustainable market-fixing policies which enabled equally unsustainable levels of public expenditure: a political double-whammy if ever there was one !

Thus all the rhetoric currently directed by trade union leaders, and people like Labour Party leadership contender Ed Balls, at the Coalition Government's proposals to manage the economy and public finances sound extremely rich coming from a partnership which, aside from the speculative investment industry, have done most in recent years to create the very problems about which they now most vociferously complain. Talk about trying to get away with murder !

Green Party MP Job Share Proposal

I very much support UK Green Party Leader Caroline Lucas's proposal for MP job shares. Like her, I would like to see much more sharing of powerful and well paid positions. Unfortunately, it's not just amongst Britain's over-bonused bankers that greed continues to be good. Listeners to BBC Radio 4's "Any Questions" this week will have heard Labour Party leadership contender Ed Balls's reluctance to acknowledge the possibility of sharing the position of shadow chancellor with his wife, Yvette Cooper. This greedy couple of class warriors - yes, there's still plenty of them around - both held Cabinet positions in the previous government, and were leading lights in promoting the kind of policies that contributed to the country's present financial and economic problems. I therefore find myself in the unlikely position of agreeing that two Balls would be even worse than one in this instance, notwithstanding my general support for the Green Party proposal.

A SHORT STORY ABOUT SAUSAGE ROLLS

A couple of weeks ago, the Saturday edition of "The Times" carried a double-page spread on Lord Prescott. The article ended on the subject of sausage rolls, and our former Deputy Prime Minister's seduction by the offer of half a dozen from a girl at Greggs the Bakers in Hull.

The article also covered the issue of shipping, a favourite with the erstwhile hero of the Kyoto Agreement, and onetime Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions.

In short-crust - or puff for that matter - pastry terms, there is a lot more shipping these days, a source - or should that be sauce -not only of major direct impacts upon the environment, but also those nasty embedded emissions, a bit like hidden calories, with which BBC Radio 4's "Uncertain Climate" will deal this evening at 9.30pm. *

On the more mundane matter of food miles at home, it should be noted that around one in four lorries on British roads are involved in food distribution, and over half of these are empty, a reminder perhaps of pies that are all puff pastry and no filling.

Happily, this isn't true of Greggs', purveyor's of "The Nation's Favourite Sausage Roll". Sadly, the same cannot be said for British politics and its thick coating of media pastry during the Silly Season, to whose lack of content we should now all bid a not-so-fond farewell.

I, for one, shall be making a submission to the House of Commons Communities and Local Government Select Committee's Inquiry into the "Abolition of Regional Spatial Strategies". This will seek to separate the "phoney war" - or puff pastry if you prefer - around housebuilding targets for the English Regions, from the more meaty issues at stake.

* Please see also http://janetmackinnon.wordpress.com

UK HOUSEBUILDING: THE PHONEY WAR

As Summer draws to a close, and with a new government now in place, the resumption of what can only be described as a "phoney war" by the UK's large scale housebuilding sector, and its adherents, has once again gathered momentum.

Historically, the big beasts of the UK housebuilding industry have enjoyed some of the highest profits in their sector, based upon international comparisons. This has led to calls from the wider development business, as well as consumer groups, for the industry to be better regulated.

However, whilst some anti-competitive practices amongst major housebuilders and construction groups have been identified, notably with regard to price fixing in public procurement, much of the sector remains, quite simply, unreconstructed.

One of the main reasons for this is the industry's unrivalled public affairs infrastructure, which is supported by organisations like the Institute for Housing and the National Housing Federation, who have a remarkably uncritical relationship with commercial construction interests.

Both these reputable organisations should know full well that commercial house builders are not going to develop more houses than they can construct, sell or rent at a profit - notwithstanding any affordability or social subsidy component - for the market.

The fact that the UK market is delivering an all time low number of dwellings at present is, to put it simply, "the nature of the beast", or more accurately, "the nature of the big beasts"; and all the rhetoric around this reality little more than a phoney war.

PLEASE END FERTILITY CULT POLITICS

It must surely be testimony to a profound lack of content - and perhaps sheer boredom factor -in Blair's autobiography and the Labour Party leadership contenders' debate, published and broadcast yesterday, that the media should choose to focus instead on William Hague's sex life.

In adopting the cost-saving measure of sharing a twin-bed hotel room with a young male adviser during the recent general election campaign, the Foreign Secretary has fallen prey to prurient minds, of which there are indeed a very great many, and a general presumption of something untoward in this arrangement. Surely, if Mr Hague had been having an affair with his young adviser he wouldn't have been so blatant about it !

However, the Foreign Secretary's response to allegations of an affair have touched the heart of the matter: Mr Hague's failure to pro-create with his wife, or anyone else, and thereby fulfill the requirements of the fertility cult which has dominated British politics in recent years.

The fact that Mr Hague has been forced to make "a detailed and emotional statement" (Metro) to explain the situation is testimony again to the low levels to which politics, and wider political commentary, in this country has sunk.

As for the propriety of the young adviser's appointment, our corridors of power would surely be empty if everyone was up to the job, as anyone who encountered the political entourage of former London Mayor - and Phallus-in-Chief - Ken Livingstone will be aware.

British Politics: Not a Game of Cricket

Whilst the world of cricket may be fretting about the latest match-fixing allegations, "No Balls" has been good for British politics in recent months as far as I'm concerned.

I refer, of course, to the Ed Balls campaign for the Labour Party leadership. Mr Balls basically wants a return to the days of "Spend, Spend, Spend" government on the back of the Blair-Brown speculative bubble, and he's advocating the kind of economic "match-fixing" policies which brought us to the current state we're in.

With that opening spin, I'd like to set out my wider views on the forthcoming Labour Party leadership elections and, indeed, my own political perspective at the present time.

To adopt a biblical reference and deal with the last first, I'm not so much interested in the particular political party species these days: with the possible exception of the lizard-like Ken Livingstone, who has, incidentally, thrown his balls in with Ed. It is the wider ecology of politics which concerns me, including the sustainability of the habitat generally known as "Centre-Left".

Now, it seems to be that the other Ed - Miliband that is - and Diane Abbott are the creatures best evolved to occupy this territory, Mr Miliband probably having the superior intellect, and Ms Abbott more common sense.

With regard to the wider political landscape, my guess is that at some future time socio-economic climate change may be accompanied by a shift in the tectonic plates of party politics, to borrow a favourite phrase of Lord Prescott, and a new social democratic grouping may emerge comprising some former Labour and Liberal-Democrat Members or Parliament.

However, such a "Rainbow Coalition" is not quite yet on the horizon; and whether the present terrain turns out to be "Brokeback Politics" or something more lofty has I think for most people yet to be determined.

Postscript : As an "old environmentalist", I would strongly caution against the creation of a "New Green Movement" based upon the development of GONGOS - Government-Organised Non-Government Organisations - of the kind found in China, for instance.

FIRE & FLOOD - ACTS OF GOD OR MAN ?

The recent forest fires in Russia, together with flooding in Pakistan and China, have dominated the world news this month. Wider climate change aside, abnormally hot and wet weather, linked to changes in the Gulf Stream and seasonal monsoons, has been identified as the root cause of these natural disasters.

However, Russia has experienced increased forest fires over a number of years, including devastating outbreaks in the far east of the country. The cause of these is largely "anthropogenic" - they are started by people - and other "human factors", including lack of strategic fire defence infrastructure, have undoubtedly exacerbated the latest catastrophic outbreaks.

Similarly in Pakistan, resources allocated for flood defence and emergency services seem to have been lost to corruption or incompetence. Additionally, there is the problem - shared with China - of development pressures associated with a growing population which inhabits areas prone to natural disasters.

In other words, these so-called "Acts of God" are very much "People Problems". Of these, it is clearly Pakistan that faces the greatest set of challenges. As well as countries such as Britain and the United States, it is to be hoped that the wider Islamic world, particularly wealthy nations in the Middle East, will come to the assistance of the people of Pakistan, and also that those nationals hitherto engaged in terrorism will now turn their energies to disaster relief.

BP - NOT BEYOND POLITICS

News that outgoing BP chief executive Tony Hayward is to pursue business opportunities in Russia suggests to me that he would make a good replacement for the former parasailing donkey, Anapka. The now famous ass, rescued by the Murdoch media machine - aka The Sun newspaper - was forced to fly through the air by a Russian entrepreneur to advertise a nearby private beach, much to the horror of those enjoying the public seashore beneath the braying beast. Sea-loving sportsman Mr Hayward seems like a fair swap for Anapka - who has been signed-up by Spurs Harry Redknapp according to The Sun's website - and Prime Minister Putin might invite the BP bete noire to sing some old Soviet songs at his summer dacha. Sounds fanciful ? So does Hayward's payout to most sensible people. However, if the man's a donkey, his BP colleagues in the US are asses along with a good few people in their government.