I enjoyed watching the election coverage during the day in Singapore and it has been a drama ever since. The day that Brown announced that he would stand aside to allow talks between Labour and the Liberal Democrats I left early because I was so enraged by the possibility of it. That didn't last too long thankfully and the resulting Liberal-Conservative coalition is something I rather like.
I have always voted Labour in every General Election. Even in 2005 I decided to lend my support to the independently minded MP for Walthamstow Neil Gerrard because he was essentially an opponent to the government and I wanted to reward his good decisions. Labour's legacy is a good one in many ways and for Civil Partnerships and much of their equality legislation I am grateful.
The decision is not a simple accounting one though where I put the Iraq war in one column and repeal of section 28 in the other and add it all up. You have a feel for which group of people best represents you and your interests. Politically I am probably an 19th century liberal and I despise much of the Conservative's dogma around morality and nationalism. I am sure that I would like Neil Gerrard much more than our Tory MP in Hertfordshire whose voting record on gay rights was abysmal and who is probably just the sort of person who would rather Harriet be taken away from us.
But what really lost me to Labour was my perception that they wanted to control every aspect of our lives. David Davis is likely to be no fan of gay parents but I felt like he spoke for me on civil liberties. Labour I think was corrupted by the management consultants and wanted endless databases, performance metrics and micro-management and frankly government is simply not fit to hold all that information as the Child Benefit debacle cystalised so clearly. No doubt Gordon thought he was clever in using tax credits, topups and benefits to get help to people but present them with forty page forms and the result is obvious - some people game the system and exploit the inconsistencies while the vast majority of people who need and deserve the support don't claim it because they either do not understand the form or resent exposing every aspect of their lives to a government machine in a pathetic plea for help.
So Lib-Con works for me and the big hope is that they can govern from the centre in the way I believed Mr Blair would in 1997.
My own personal interest beyond parenting is of course banking and the election campaign was depressing. It is now gospel that the only attitude permissible to banking is overt hostility and derision.
Derivatives have been an important part of finance and the real economy for hundreds of years. They are primarily about the transfer of risk - the agricultural producer can sell the grain he has not yet harvested for a given price and know how much he has to invest for the next year. A company making an international aquisition can ensure that foreign exchange movements six months hence do not render the deal impractical. Risk has to be transferred somewhere and for that you had better hope there are people willing to speculate.
In fact the main innovation in recent years has probably been the concept of securitisation. The idea is that you pool assets that will pay income but that payment is tranched. Different types of investors buy different tranches and receive different amounts of interest. Losses are allocated to those who receive the most interest first. It opens up the possibility for very risk averse investors such as pension funds to access markets such as real estate, commercial loans and so on.
Obviously things go wrong but in my view it is largely a question of scale. Pass too much risk around and if there is a blow up then the whole system can crash. If the housing market in Florida collapses the world would still go on and there would be enough cash to sort out Florida but if you have done such a great volume of risky deals that all the states start to fail then you set in chain the potential for financial catastrophe.
So it all has gone terribly wrong but some of the solutions proposed are misguided. The size of the bank is not relevant - cf Lehman and Northern Rock. Short selling is not the work of the devil - it is a legitimate way of testing the value of an asset. Remember the hue and cry around the hedge funds that were shorting our fine institution Halifax Bank of Scotland? Well they were right, it was bust and they did not bring it down. Certainly we should have controls to stop banks entering businesses they do not understand and it is important to have greater transparency over what is being shorted and some controls to protect some assets. I'm not saying it's perfect just that it is not black and white.
And as for the huge bonuses and salaries I won't defend everyone but I will say this. The government's bonus tax brought in £2bn to the treasury. No bonus no £2bn simple as that. As for my own position - I suppose the best I can say is that at least my gains have not been squandered on an over-the-top vehicle but used to enable us to have Harriet and hopefully her future siblings.
We all act to protect our own interests it is natural. At dinner when a nice lady from Dulwich complained to me about the banks and how distressed she was when her money in Northern Rock seemed to be at risk I asked what she thought the previous year. She looked a little confused before I reminded her of Farepack. Government guarantees protected 48 thousand of her money and eventually they protected the whole lot but for the people who had invested £480 in total what help was there. None. Nil. Nada. It would have cost 50 million to bail them all out - not much to ask from the bankers 2 billion tax one would think.
Perhaps there is some justice and that we get the government, and the finance system, that we deserve. So when it all goes base over apex the place to start looking for answers is perhaps closer than we would like.
