100 On Up!

Today is special for me, as it marks the 100th blog I’ve posted. It is quite a commitment to post a blog almost every day, but like everything it’s mostly about discipline.

I decided that I was going to use this opportunity to review the world’s current situation. This is My State of the Blog, in which I will offer solutions and predictions for the balance of the year.

Clearly there is no end in sight for the major conflicts in the world. Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan is anywhere near to a conclusion. However, what’s worrying me isn’t that we might lose militarily, but that we have done nothing to root out the endemic corruption of the Iraqis or Afghanistanis we have ceded power to. While this is the case there is no moral imperative for any local inhabitants to believe in our form of democracy. The answer is for us to do one of two things. Put in more force, and aim to win the conflicts rather than to contain them. Or we could simply pull out and leave those two countries to their fate. Personally I believe we will do neither and therefore everyone will suffer.

The Israel / Palestine conflict is really about Israel and Hamas and Israel and Hezbollah. Until these two terrorist organizations are cut off from their Iranian paymasters this conflict will continue and escalate into direct conflict between Iran and Israel. This will take the form of Israel attacking Iran’s nuclear capacity and Iran seeking some form of surrogate revenge via their terrorist proxies both regionally and internationally. The solution is that the rest of the world must act now to force Iran to abandon their nuclear weapons program, and their vicious rhetoric threatening Israel’s existence. Meanwhile Osama is still hiding in a cave somewhere in the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Many moderate Muslims agree that the world will be better for his death. I hope they get their wish. He is truly an evil and misguided man, and his work has caused misery for many millions of people, most of them people he would claim as his own.

The sub prime mortgage induced credit crises will rumble on and recession is the result. In fact we will be lucky if this doesn’t worsen into a full-blown depression, complete with mass bankruptcies, unemployment and shrinking business opportunities. Today, in the UK the news organizations were reporting a forecast that, if property prices continue to drop at their present rate, more than two million homeowners face negative equity. Put another way this means that these mortgages are now bigger than the value of the properties. Wake up everyone, a great many of these mortgages were 100% or more of the value of the property when they were taken out, or put another way, they were in negative equity to start with! These greedy risk takers, otherwise known as the banks, were betting that there was going to be a never ending rise in prices and therefore it didn’t matter whether or not the loan was as big or bigger than the value, because values would overtake this loan in double quick time.

I am giving this subject it’s own second paragraph. The solution is for the banks not to panic and to find ways to help their clients survive where they are. It pays everyone to keep the borrowers in the properties under almost any foreseeable circumstance. This can be achieved by government working with the banks to create a shared ownership, affordable housing scheme designed, retroactively, to take over some of the equity, which could be recovered later, if possible. This could reduce the monthly exposure and divide it into some mortgage payment plus a reduced “rental” sum.

The next generation iPhone from Apple is being released momentarily and will be an even bigger smash hit than its first draft. It is said that this model is not only faster, thinner and more user friendly, but is also going to be a lot cheaper. I love my blackberry but I can’t resist for much longer. Whilst I am on things Apple I have to admit that I’m typing this on my Mac Book Air, and its bloody fantastic. Not only does it meet my every computing need but also it’s easy to schlep through airports on the run, and it really makes a difference.

Manchester United will have another great season in English and European football whether they still have Cristiano Ronaldo in the team or not. I idolize the young man as the best footballer on the planet, but if his greed overwhelms his common sense and he seeks to be released from his contract, that he signed last year, then the club should show him the door.

China will do exceptionally well in the Beijing Olympics, but I suspect you, like me, won’t be able to look at the athletic medalists without your suspicions being elevated. What a shame, these people once epitomized for the world, the finest attributes of human endeavor.

Freedoms will continue to erode in the Western democracies as America elects Barak Obama and he turns out to be more Jimmy Carter than John Kennedy. I sincerely hope that this prediction doesn’t come true as I have very little time for the peanut farmer from Georgia.

In my home country Gordon Brown will sink to immeasurably low numbers in the opinion polls, and instead of trying to chase the lost millions he does what he should have done in the first place, which is to relax and just do the best job he can rather than to be a pale imitation of Tony Blair. Nevertheless, it’s going to be too little too late for the iron Chancellor, who turned out to be the Prime Minister made out of putty.

Like you I shall generally not get thinner or fitter, but I shall keep trying. The sun will shine too little in the UK and too much elsewhere, when it doesn’t rain for more than a week here we call it a drought, and when it does rain for more than a week, we have floods, and we will blame both on global warming. I will continue to write my blog and I hope you will still read it. 100 blogs delivered, and many more to come.