Gunning For Trouble

In the past it has been argued that a long hot sticky spell can be a contributory factor when riots break out on the streets.

With some local police forces already suggesting that they cannot cope with the weekly Saturday night fever on British streets what riots may break out where, when, why, who by and what for?

Another area where indiscipline is rife is in the City of London, where it is not so much riots  as extensive rigging of the financial markets that we are told are the heart of the services to the world we give and a vital part of our new economy.

Such problems are not confined to London but are around the world.  The current Energy War going on in the Ukraine between the EU and its occasional ally, the USA and Russia is one which is turning financial with unpredictable consequences.

Russia has upped its key interest rate to 8%, at a time when those in the West are suppressed to near zero or even minus in real terms.  It is to combat gathering inflation in Russia and to seek to protect itself from any adverse effects arising from sanctions imposed by the EU and USA.  But there are other things going on which can impact on The City and Wall Street.

This could well have wider effects in the banking sector.  Frances Coppola in "Forbes" has written that "The EU Should Be Aware of Russian Interest In Balkan Banks".  This is murky money business in the bandit country part of Europe's financial sector linked to London.  Who knows what could or might happen or be triggered?

One story in the newspapers is of the discovery of a letter in the papers of part of the family of Sir Edward Grey, Foreign Secretary 1906 to 1916, very recently.

It appears that King George V, thought to have remained apart from and neutral in the Balkan Crisis of 1914, demanded of the Foreign Secretary that if a cause to declare War on Germany could not be determined then an excuse must be found because of the German threat to Britain.

Grey's later remark when the First World War broke out in 1914 about the lights going out all over Europe never to be lit again in our lifetime is the one thing for which he is remembered.

And he wasn't talking about Energy supplies.