Tag: Radio Free Delingpole

Radio Free Delingpole XVI: Buying Britain’s gold back

June 30, 2012

Today’s Radio Free Delingpole is dedicated to one of my new obsessions: gold. Partly I’m interested in it for the same reason Gollum was in the ring – because it’s shiny and precious and makes me feel like I can control all Middle Earth. But mainly it’s because I think our global economic policies are steering us inexorably towards monetary collapse. Gold, historically, has a proved a useful store of value in times of inflation or hyperinflation. I see no reason why this shouldn’t happen again WTSHTF (as we Austrian-survivalist-anarcho-capitalist types like to call the coming event).

Which is yet another reason, of course, why we should all so viscerally loathe Gordon Brown – and never ever forgive him for what he did to our gold reserves. Not only did he sell them off at a pittance –  395 tonnes of the stuff at a rock bottom $275 an ounce – but he actually got even less than he could have done by “butchering the trade.” This is the City phrase for telegraphing your sale in advance. In other words, if you announce to the world that you’re going to sell large quantities of your gold reserves – as Gordon did – gold holders will naturally sell off their own reserves beforehand, anticipating the inevitable price drop. As I detail in this Spectator article, what this also meant is that Britain has dropped way down the league of gold-owning nations.

The Chinese are surreptitiously building up their reserves; so too are basket cases like Venezuela. Britain, however, now languishes at a mere 17th in the international bullion-owning league table. And when it comes to gold holdings per capita we don’t even make the top 20. (The Swiss come top with – in 2011 figures – $6,000 worth of gold per person; the Lebanese are next; then the Germans. Britain has the lowest per capita holding in the EU).

This is why I think it’s such a totally brilliant idea that my friends Ralph, Jan and Will from the Real Asset Company are campaigning for us to Buy Britain’s Gold Back. Well, obviously, being a company where you can buy gold bullion that’s just the sort of thing they would say. And if you are going to buy gold, let me warn you right now, it’s not a one-way bet: I bought a thousand quid’s worth last year on the understanding that by this time the world’s economy would collapse and my bullion would be worth at least double. Instead, the world economy didn’t collapse and my shiny precious is now worth less than one thousand quid.

Nonetheless,  for what my ignorant amateur’s opinion is worth, I do agree with those who argue that gold (currently priced around the $1500 dollar mark) is going to hit $2,000 an ounce before it hits $1000 an ounce. Partly, this will be because of the inflationary effects of Quantitative Easing (of which, insanely, our government for one is planning more). Partly, it will be because of intriguing – and under-reported – policy shifts like the US Federal Reserve’s proposals to have gold bullion declared a “zero-risk-weighted” asset (currently it has a 50 per cent risk-weighting), making it less likely that in future capital-impaired banks will feel the need to dump their gold holdings.

Anyway, you can take or leave this stuff, as you will. I’m not trying to turn you all into goldbugs. In fact I hope you don’t become goldbugs because you’ll only end up weird and obsessive and shunned by people at parties. But if you want to read further, I do recommend the excellent Cobden Centre (“for honest money and social progress”) or Bogpaper.com (“Getting you out of the s**t since 2012”) or, if you really want to freak yourself out and live every day like it’s the last before the world ends, there’s the monumentally depressing Zero Hedge.

Related posts:

  1. Radio Free Delingpole: Popes and Puppies
  2. Radio Free Delingpole 40: Dirty Pictures
  3. Radio Free Delingpole XIV: Fracking, Thrones and Ninjas
  4. Radio Free Delingpole: Stupid Liberal Things

One thought on “Radio Free Delingpole XVI: buying Britain’s gold back”

  1. Alois Klein says:6th July 2012 at 10:32 amJames
    Read watermelons-need more like you to spread the truth

Delingpole: Not Just for the Nasty Things in Life

Clubbing and drugging

Eddy Temple Morris. I am not worthy

To listen to some of the people on Twitter you’d think all I ever did in life is go round being evil, abusing hamsters, stealing rusks from toddlers, hampering the noble work of the selfless scientists trying to save the planet from global warming, etc.

But actually I do find time for other stuff, you know. For example, I happen to have been blessed with really excellent taste in music and as part of my outreach work to the community I regularly recommend albums which may have skipped most punters’ notice in order to bring joy and good after-dinner sounds into their otherwise squalid, miserable and thankless lives. (Still really recommend the John Grant Queen of Denmark album, btw. That would be the topmost of my top tips from the last couple of years).

What I’m not, though, I’m afraid, is down with the kids. The last cultish yoof genre I really got into was drum n bass – and that was well over ten years ago. Problem is if you’re not going clubbing or taking the right drugs, you’re never going to keep up. (Simon Napier Bell has a fascinating theory on this in his seminal Black Vinyl White Powder: he says the most important people in the development of pop culture are gay men because, having a clubbing and drugging career so much more extended than heteros who tend to get married, have children and turn staid, is that they keep the old traditions alive while easing the transition into the new ones).

For example, if you listen to the thing I’m about to recommend you realise I’m hopelessly not up to speed on dubstep. A man who is, though, is one of my best old schoolfriends Eddy Temple Morris who has ended up as one of Britain’s most successful DJs, with a long-running show on XFM (remixes and mash-ups are his speciality), residencies in Ibiza, the works.

He’s also one of the nicest men you could possibly hope to meet, so I was fascinated to discover a few years ago when I was grumbling about the flak I get (and that was in the old days when I got way, way less than I do now) and he said to me: “You’re kidding aren’t you? If people hate you it means you’ve arrived.”

Eddy is massively talented. Anyone, I think, who has ever seen one of his live sets will know exactly what I mean. (When I’m 50 I definitely want him playing at my birthday party). Yet it turns out that amount of hate he still gets is tremendous. “Look you’ve got to realise, it’s not necessarily about you. It’s about them. If you’re in the public eye people want a pop at you because they’re kind of upset that you’re there and they’re not.” Eddy’s policy is generally to be nice to these people and empathise with their pain. It’s not mine but then, I’m not as nice as Eddy.

Anyhoo, the trolls will all now be thinking this is some kind of personal therapy session about the perils of minor celebrity, but it’s not. All I was really trying to do was cobble a few interesting words together just so I could promote this.

It’s a podcast Eddy and I have done together for Ricochet – the latest episode of my ongoing series Radio Free Delingpole. Usually my podcasts are about US politics (I recommend the recent ones I did with Toby Young and Douglas Murray), but this one is totally about music. You will hear me discovering that my tastes aren’t nearly as cool as I thought they were (though Eddy lets me down very gently), as well as learning what Moombahton is and who Skrillex is. (I really REALLY like Skrillex.)

Enjoy! It’s the COOLEST PODCAST EVER.(Apparently.)

Related posts:

  1. Life’s too short to be nice to Lefties
  2. Four Tet, Owl City, Hot Chip
  3. My incredible Big-Oil-funded life
  4. Life’s a Bowl of Toenails

3 thoughts on “Delingpole: not just for the nasty things in life”

  1. G Teal says:5th February 2012 at 12:20 pmThank you for injecting some common sense into the climate change fiasco.
  2. Graham Teal says:5th February 2012 at 12:22 pmthank you for injecting some common sense into the climate change hysteria.
  3. Cuffeee says:6th February 2012 at 6:58 pm“But actually I do find time for other stuff, you know.”What? You find other animals to abuse apart from hamsters?

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God, I’m brilliant!

Like my esteemed colleague Dan Hannan, I have a pathological aversion to posting up videos of myself on my blogs.

In this case, however, I feel I must make an exception. It’s not often you get to appear on Uncommon Knowledge being interviewed by the mighty Peter Robinson. (Our subjects: Climategate; Watermelons; the imminent collapse of Europe)Peter Robinson is the uber-poised, uber-intelligent, uber-civilised (well he did go to Ch Ch) commentator, broadcaster and former Reagan aide who as a young man scripted the “Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Brandenburg Gate speech in Berlin in 1987. He’s the co-founder of the US conservative website Ricochet which contains some of the most brilliant writing in the entire blogosphere and fabbo podcasts too including one mysteriously called Radio Free DelingpoleHe’s also a fellow of the Hoover Institution – an island of immense conservative soundness set in a vast ocean of liberal sanctimoniousness at Stanford (aka “The Farm”) University, in Palo Alto, capitol of Silicon Valley, in the People’s Republic of California. His Uncommon Knowledge series is pretty much the most distinguished political discussion programme you’ll see on TV because – thanks to Peter – it still exudes that otherwise vanished gravitas which used to be a commonplace in the days of Face to Face or Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation.Normally, Peter interviews hommes serieux like  Thomas Sowell , outspoken MEP Daniel Hannan, and the late great Christopher Hitchens.Hell, though, Robinson’s too smooth by far and it’s about time he did some proper slumming.

Related posts:

  1. I’m on a cruise with lots of rich, conservative Americans. And it’s brilliant
  2. British Gas boss announces brilliant new scheme to make Britain even more expensive and ugly
  3. Global Warming: the Guilty Men
  4. Miliband’s brilliant plan to combat climate change: ‘We’ll export unicorns to China’.

2 thoughts on “God, I’m brilliant!”

  1. Nige Cook says:17th December 2011 at 11:36 amWith all due respect, James, God already KNOWS you are brilliant, so you don’t need to remind Him in the title of a blog post. You will start sounding a little bit arrogant to the lefties unless you make a big acting scene of being more humble and diffident.

    Also, Dan Hannan MEP speaks his mind in videos, amusing the lefties like the brown man: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94lW6Y4tBXs

    But the Uncommon Knowledge interview IS brilliant.

  2. Vincent Jappi says:25th December 2011 at 3:06 pmRon Paul accused of being “raaaaaaacist” for allowing THIS to be published in his name?

    “LOS ANGELES RACIAL TERRORISM
    “The Ron Paul Political Report, 1992

    “The Los Angeles and related riots mark a new era in American cultural, political, and economic life. We now know that we are under assault from thugs and revolutionaries who hate Euro-American civilization and everything it stands for: private property, material success for those who earn it, and Christian morality.

    “Ten thousand stores and other buildings looted and burned, thousands beaten and otherwise seriously injured, 52 people dead. That was the toll of the Los Angeles riots in which we saw white men pulled from their cars and trucks and shot or brutally beaten. (In every case, the mob was not too enraged to pick the victim’s pocket.) We saw Korean and white stores targeted by the mob because they “exploited the community,” i.e., sold products people wanted at prices they were willing to pay.Worst of all, we saw the total breakdown of law enforcement, as black and white liberal public officials had the cops and troops disarmed in the face of criminal anarchy.

    “In San Francisco and perhaps other cities, says expert Burt Blumert, the rioting was led by red-flag carrying members of the Revolutionary Communist Party and the Workers World Party, both Trotskyite-Maoist. The police were allowed to intervene only when the rioters assaulted the famous Fairmont and Mark Hopkins hotels atop Nob Hill. A friend of Burt’s, a jewelry store owner, had his store on Union Square looted by blacks, and when the police arrived in response to his frantic calls, their orders were to protect his life, but not to interfere with the rioting.

    “Even though the riots were aimed at whites (in L.A. at Koreans who had committed the crime of working hard and being successful, and at Cambodians in Long Beach), and even though anti-white and anti-Asian epithets filled the air, this is not considered a series of hate crimes, nor a violation of the civil rights of whites or Asians.

    “The criminals who terrorize our cities–in riots and on every non-riot day–are not exclusively young black males, but they largely are. As children, they are trained to hate whites, to believe that white oppression is responsible for all black ills, to “fight the power,” and to steal and loot as much money from the white enemy as possible. Anything is justified against “The Man.” And “The Woman.’ A lady I know recently saw a black couple in the supermarket with a cute little girl, three years old or so. My friend waved to the tiny child, who scowled, stuck out her tongue, and said (somewhat tautologically): “I hate you, white honkey.” And the parents were indulgent. Is any white child taught to hate in this way? I’ve never heard of it. If a white child made such a remark to a black woman, the parents would stop it with a reprimand or a spank.

    “But this is normal, and in fact benign, compared to much of the anti-white ideology in the thoroughly racist black community. The black leadership indoctrinates its followers with phony history and phony theory to bolster its claims of victimology. Like the communists who renounced all that was bourgeois, the blacks reject all that is “Eurocentric.” They demand their own kind of thinking, and deny the possibility of non-blacks understanding it…”
    https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dLraW1pPL1pNWyZ94Ht1wwN2dOxwwr-CiRTRvFy44MA/edit
    accounts.google.com

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