A few days ago I received an email asking my opinion of the difference in sound and facilities of an SSL 4000 and the new AWS.

hi,
i'm watching your website and i'm interested in the ssl
4000 24 channels,i never had an ssl consolle,so i
have 2 questions for you:
1)can i have more details pictures of this consolle
and also where is possible to see it.
2)wich one is better in sound quality the ssl 4000 or
the new aws 900+?
thank you

I answered honestly as follows;

There is no comparison between the real SSL and the AWS. In comparison,
the AWS is like a toy.
Differences are;
1. The SSL has full in line monitoring, giving 48 channels on mix.
The AWS is very simple 24 channel.
2. The SSL has dynamics on all inputs (24 x compressor/gates) plus
the classic 'quad' compressor on the mix bus
The AWS has one compressor that can be assigned.
3. The SSL is fully modular, meaning that if a channel goes down, a spare
can be used while it is being fixed, or alternatively that channel can be
removed for fixing, leaving 23 in use.
The AWS has chanels in blocks of 12, so if one has a fault, all 12
channels have to be removed for fixing.
4. The SSL is easily repaired and serviced, as eq, dynamics etc are on
internal cards and are 'discrete' (i.e., easily repaired components)
The AWS components are 'surface mounted' (i.e. stamped onto the PCB
by machine) which requires special tools to remove and resolder. It
is really only repairable in the factory.
5. The SSL has an external power supply which can either be fixed or
replaced if it has a fault (all our desks are supplied with completely
rebuilt power supplies which are guarranteed for a year and will last
for decades)
The AWS has a built-in switch mode power supply. If this developes
a fault, the entire desk must go back to SSL to be fixed.
6. The SSL sounds like an SSL - full bodied and positive.
The AWS sounds like an AWS - much less powerful than an SSL
The SSL cost in excess of £150,000 when new (at a time when £150,000
was worth far more than it is today). It is innevitable that the build quality and
performance are far higher than a desk costing £37,000 today.

On the downside, the SSL requires more installation, will need occasional
servicing and draws more power. However, it will last far longer than an
AWS and is a fully professional piece of equipment.
Best Wishes
Mark

Now, I think this is a pretty fair assessment. You may dissagree, but we all have our opinions. Equally, though, I can't see my comments about the ASW as being particularly negative. It is what it is, we sell quite a few and for a whole variety of modern day useage, it's the perfect tool for the job. But come on - the AWS is to a 4000 what a Smart Car is to a BMW. You get what you pay for, and SSL made their reputation with the 4000, which is a beautifully designed, engineered and sounding console.

The point of this blurb is that it seems that my email found its way into the hands of the sales department at SSL, who were offended, outraged, pricked. Now, quite apart from the fact that I am miffed when an email of mine is circulated without my consent, I see nothing in any way offensive in my comments. Actually, I'm pretty laid back about my mails doing the rounds; I'm always honest in my comments (whether in private or on the website), express a fair opinion and am happy to stand by that. I will never say one thing to one person and another behind their back. With me, what you see is what I am (a blunt northerner, I guess).

This anecdote is symptomatic of the age we live in, sadly. When I first became involved with the industry, the monthly bible was a magazine called Studio Sound. All my fellow engineers turned straight to the reviews section to read about the latest recording equipment. And we believed what we read. Why? Because the reviewers were honest. If a piece of gear sucked, they said so. If it shone, they said so. If it sparkled but lacked lustre in certain areas, they said so. And when we got our hands on that bit of kit we found...the reviews were spot on. In the interests of fairness, Studio Sound allowed the manufacturer or distributor the right of reply. But what often happened was that the manufacturer took these technical reviews seriously and rectified the faults, making their gear fit for purpose. Thus Studio Sound were in no small way responsible for much of the excellent vintage gear still happily in use or trading hands today.

Now, compare this with the modern review. I can tell you as a fact that the more filthy lucre a company spends advertising in the 'Pro Audio' rags, the better will be the reviews for their products. We call this 'Advertorial' and it's an open secret in the trade that these days, to all intents and purposes, good reviews and purchased rather than earned. Indeed, I can quote a number of new products that we've had in our hands with serious design faults - mics that are inherently noisy, compressors that distort if the threshold is set above one, eq's that don't eq - yet these units have received five star ratings in so called respectable magazines.

Yes, bro, integrity went out of the shop window years ago.

And this is why I stand by the comments I make, when asked, in correspondence with customers. I won't gild the lilly. I won't polish an electronic turd to generate a sale. I am an opinionated snob and proud of it. Because audio gems deserve the highest praise and sewage deserves none.

I like SSL consoles. I like the mind that conceived them, the skills that made them, the ears that use them, the ethos that sustains them. Strangely, I also like the AWS900, even though on day one, when a company representative showed me the mock up, I pointed out a series of shortcomings - the lack of even simple in line monitoring, the lack of dynamics, the switch mode power supply, the non- modular construction, the surface mounted components. And the rep's response? He agreed with every damned point, but added...'It's not supposed to be a proper SSL. It's built to a price.'

The AWS is a valuable tool for modern recording. But it ain't an SSL 4000. And if those within SSL take the hump at this simple truth, then I pity them. They should take pride in the history of the company, in past acheivements and in the fact that so many of their great desks remain in daily use rather than nosing around in private correspondence.
SSL is dead. Long live SSL.
Eccentric

Cool... we need to talk economics... I have been reading Wall Street
Journal daily and am convinced that Wall Street hype is ficticious wealth
created on paper only, by CEO's, investment banker types making $35M a
year and a fucking bonus on top for company's they put into the dirt. It
is all bullshit... capitalism at its worst.

Have a good day.

Best regards,
___________________
michael nehra

Mike,

I'm an old fashioned commie bastard (actually, an anarcho syndicalist) but I must leap to the defense of capitalism (also being a capitalist pig by virtue of my businesses).

What went on in the last decade is fraud, not capitalism. Rather than a free market, the market was distorted by an unregulated banking system that invented ways of turning thin air into massive profits by the simple expedient of lending money that didn't exist to people who couldn't repay. You, I or my brainless cat could do much the same just so long as a) we didn't tell the outside world what we were up to and b) we wore slick suits, kept a confident grin on our faces and hid behind the facade of respectability.

These bankers knew exactly what they were doing and were very well aware that the whole pack of cards would collapse one day; it had to. But until it did...they pocketed massive 'commission' bonuses on fantastic paper profits (liken Enron, these profits were not actually banked, but rather represented potential future profits over twenty five years, all booked into the year when the deals were written rather than the long term when the capital and interest was paid and actual profits generated). They didn't care that it was a scam; the loopholes in the system allowed them to get away with it, and get away with it they did, becoming billionaires in the process. Indeed, there are still thousands of fat cats making millions through 'hedging' on collapsing stocks and currencies and doing their utmoset to perpetuate the phoney doom and gloom that fills the media.

I have two concerns; firstly, that these rip off merchants won't be bought to book. The system will protect them. There are most definitely many that should be behind bars for fraud. Secondly, western government policy is designed to try to recreate the economic falsity of the last ten years by printing money and mortaging our futures to prop up a failed system.

That economic model didn't work, hence our current woes. So why try to recreate it? Why prop up car manufacturing plants (for example) when quite obviously the world doesn't need so many new cars? Vehicle sales have fallen by 50% in the last year. Who is hurting? So you and I squeeze an extra year or two out of our existing motor (in fact, I drive a £300 1992 BMW 320 and wouldn't change it for the world). No...we can get by. And so I resent mortgaging my kids future to subsidise car plants to make motors that no one wants or needs. The excuse is to avoid unemployment. Great. So why not make tractors and combine harvesters and GIVE them to the third world? It will cost us the same, but would bring real benefit to whole populations who could then increase crop production, improve their standards of living and buy UK made compressors and mixing consoles when their economies flourish down the line.

Mike, we all got screwed. To quote The Who...'We won't get screwed again...' Or rather, to quote Gordon Brown, we will.

We're about to experience a Groundhog Day as the spivs regroup to embark on a second round of fraud.

A plague on all the politician's houses.

M

It’s depressing to see the New Year kick off with another bout of man’s inhumanity to man.

Pictures of twenty-first century war machines raining terror on trapped civilians in Gaza leaves me feeling numb and wondering just how far civilisation has come in the last ten thousand years.

Irrespective of anyone’s political views, I can see no justification whatsoever for the indiscriminate carnage currently being waged in Palestine.

Two wrongs can never make a right. Additionally, such brutality is surely counter-productive and must lead to another generation of (rightly?) embittered terrorists. More than anything, though, I am sickened to the pit of my stomach by the implied lack of value placed upon an Arab life in relation to an Israeli or American (or European?). All life is precious – by far the most precious commodity on this ravaged planet of ours. I can only hope that within my lifetime I see equal weight given to the hopes, dreams, aspirations and lives of my third and second world brothers and sisters as we currently bestow upon our immediate neighbours.

Closer to home, we enter a new year of economic madness, and this concerns me. Maybe it is part and parcel of the distorted value system propagated by the media (as witnessed in their attitudes toards the Middle East and parts of Africa), but we run a serious risk of losing a rare opportunity to rectify the mistakes of past decades.

Let me elaborate…

We are experiencing the collapse of mammon, in the form of the discrediting of a financial system that feeds on greed. For twenty years, since the Thatcher/Reagan ‘revolution’, the free market has run riot, untrammelled by regulatory constraints or moral concerns. Profit has been the be-all and end-all of finance, to the point where fortunes have been made by manufacturing phoney margins from non-existent deals. First Enron collapsed as strings of spurious accounting paperchains unravelled, and now we see a slump in consumer confidence following the widespread realisation that the dodgy commercial instruments invented by banks and hedge funds – derivatives, inflated asset values and speculative gambles – have no more substance than the hot air promulgated by our political masters.

My concern is that measures are being taken in our name by our representatives that are not designed to deal with our economic problems, but rather to restore the discredited status quo. Billions of pounds are being pumped into banks around the world to enable them to continue as before. Huge subsidies are being offered to automobile plants to enable them to continue to produce vehicles that we, the public, no longer want to buy. Efforts are afoot to force banks to offer loans to house buyers (and most obviously, Rackmanite buy-to-let landlords) to force property prices back up to previously inflated levels.

The reality is that we’ve rumbled the pointlessness of this false economic model. We want banks to be somewhere safe to invest our wages and to make modest profits by carefully lending any surplus to secure borrowers. We don’t need a new 4x4 every year. The old car is good enough to last for a few more years. And we’ve decided that a flat or a house is somewhere to live rather than a sky-rocketing investment to make property speculators into overnight millionaires. In other words, we see that we were flogged a dream that didn’t measure up in the cold light of day.

We won’t get fooled again.

So let these profligate bankers and hedge funds go to the wall. And if Ford, GM and Chrysler can’t sort out their businesses, let them fold. And if this makes hands idle, how about growing food on fallow land to replace the costly imports that deny impoverished farmers abroad a local market. If I need a car, I’ll keep the one I have alive. And if the property market goes into free fall, why, hopefully the government will snap up a few hundred thousand bargains and let them out for an affordable rent, just as councils did back in the old days.

The unregulated market has failed. In any event, we were never players in the get-rich-quick game, but rather two-legged lumps of product for the Masters of the Universe to manipulate.

There is another model that I much prefer. It is a system that puts the needs of society before those of the privileged, a system that regards homelessness as a scandal and greedy landlords as profiteers. It is a system that cares more about the careful use of resources than unbridled consumption. It is a system where money is the product of endeavour rather than a poker stake for the rich.

We have seen the financial and consumer experiments of the last twenty years collapse in abject failure. We should be given the option of a new philosophy, a more inclusive way forwards, a plan for the future that is based upon partnership with the third world and the just division of our limited resources. But no…instead, we are being asked to mortgage our children’s futures for another dose of more-of-the-same.

I am not happy with decisions being taken in my name and with my money but without my consent.

Stop and think about what’s going on. And don’t believe the media when you’re told that there is no alternative to Gordon ‘Chubby’ Brown’s profligate plans. After all, who controls the papers and our TV screens? Yes – got it in one… those same fat cats who have benefited so greatly at our expense in recent years. And of course they want a return to how it was then.

If music be the food of love, play on. After all, it may be the only food you can afford in years to come.

Oh…and Happy New Year.

Eccentric

Methinks Guy ‘Fingers’ Hands has problems at EMI. Big, big problems.

If so…yippee.

Hands made billions (this year’s favourite word) from buying up old fashioned companies, sacking half the staff, parachuting in overpaid, jumped-up management, squeezing the margins until the pips squeaked and then doubling his money by flogging the shell onto gullible stock exchange investors.

Sorry, did I say his money?

No…these flashy arbitrage merchants borrow dosh from shady investment vehicles – hedge funds and merchant banks – who want in on the glorious action.

But Hands’ ego took him a bridge too far. Not content with wanting a collection of Beatles albums, he eyed up EMI, outbid all his more experienced rivals and lashed more than a billion bucks too much on the creaking carcass (this, by his own admission). He then arrogantly told us all how the music business should be run, instituted his theories, bought in the usual pack of know-it-all top brass and…has been losing dosh hand over fist ever since (no pun intended. Damn it – yes, every pun intended)

EMI have both feet in the grave. With two months to go to replace the massive loans from Citi Bank that funded the buyout, there isn’t a Cowell’s chance in hell that Hands can bridge the massive gap between what he owes and what any prudent lender will advance for his ailing business. The company will be divvied up, the parts flogged off and the last UK major record company will end up as a logo on a cheap Chinese toaster.

You’re a real swell guy, Guy. Here’s hoping you go bankrupt along with those thousands of banker mates (that’s banker with a capital W) whom you ponce around with.

The downside is the human carnage this man’s ego will wreak. And it’s started already.

On Monday, the staff and tenants of Olympic studio were given two weeks notice to vacate the building. As of the end of December, this world famous facility will be no more.

In itself, this is sad, sad news. I hate to see any studio close, let alone one with such an historic pedigree. To be honest, though, it’s been on the cards for a while. And this makes the manner of the closure all the more outrageous.

Hands’ management style is straight from the Gordon Gecko school of Greed Is Good. There are ways and means of dealing with such a sensitive issue, but the way the EMI top brass have handled the studio closure is puke-making in the extreme.

Almost all the staff at Olympic signed on the EMI payroll when Hands was stuffing his lardy face in the Tuck Shop at prep school. Most certainly, all the tenants of the dozen or so producer suites at the studio were making great records when Hands was raping Autobahn service stations in Germany to make his first billion (and causing massive unrest by replacing the traditional menus with high margin junk food).

So what did he do? Be honourable and pop down to the studio for a chat with his long serving staff? Arrange a meeting with the producer tenants?

No. The tenants of the various white rooms at Olympic have received a terse legal letter advising them to vacate the building within two weeks or else… Oh, and a note adds that should they leave any equipment in their rooms, EMI reserves the right to sell it without discussion or recourse. The equipment doesn’t belong to EMI. It belongs to the tenants. The tenants have leases, summarily ripped up by Hands and his hatchet men.

Theft plus Rachmanism equals the brave new free enterprise economy.

So the staff go on the dole, the tenants are thrown out on the street and their worldly goods sold off to fatten the depleted coffers of this dashing entrepreneur.

Happy Christmas, folks.

Nice Guy…does he remind you of anyone?

Maybe the name Scrooge comes to mind?

A plague on all his houses…

I lost a guitar this morning – one of my prized collection – but thankfully tracked it down tonight. I must stop lending so much of my gear out.

And then we got hammered with a five figure sum for duty and freight for new US made a console purely because the manufacturer had failed to follow our detailed shipping instructions, as a result of which the fees were twice what they should have been. And this means that we’ve put nine months hard work into a deal (with installation and commissioning to come) for a negative payback. Let’s hope the government spends their undeserved bonus on something worthwhile rather than another junket to sunny climes for one of their ‘Summit Conferences’ (otherwise described as a jolly back-slapping jaunt).

One of the few fallouts of the credit crunch then bit us in the bum as a regular client got in touch to apologise for a lengthy delay in paying for an SSL we’ve been refurbishing for him. It seems that his life savings were invested in an Icelandic bank and he’s still wrestling various authorities to retrieve his dosh. He’s been offered a truckload of herring as compensation, but that’s not going to liberate his desk from our workshops.

Oh, and then there’s all yesterday'se budgetary nonsense as the UK government comes up with more ill-conceived panic measures to resolve economic problems of their own making.

Firstly, there is a loudly trumpeted reduction in levels of UK VAT, from the dizzy heights of 17.5% to the subterranian low of 15%, the upshot of which will be…bugger all. The majority of retail outlets won’t vary their existing VAT inclusive prices for the simple reason that all their wares are already rounded up or down to the nearest quid. And what real difference does two and a half percent make, anyway? No. The reduction will just sweeten the margins of the high street chain stores, and add to their bottom line. Joe Public won’t see any difference. Of course, our prices don’t include VAT, so any reduction is automatically passed on. But then we’re a pretty transparent bunch. With Funky, you know what you’re paying, and what you get.

If Gordon ‘Chubby’ Brown really wanted to pump money into the consumer economy, there is a simple measure he could have taken to inject cash straight in the tills – reintroduce student grants.

If every student in the country was given an annual grant of ten grand, the cash would be spent in the flicker of an eyelid in bars, gigs and shops up and down the country. At a stroke, the government would have fulfilled the twin advantages of giving students enough dough to scrape through the year and injecting cash in the jugular of the economy. This windfall wouldn’t be invested abroad and it wouldn’t be stuffed under mattresses. No, it would be splashed about immediately on necessities and get the high street tills ringing overnight.
It’s a thought…

I've been off air lately, for which I appologise. It's just that...

I've been riveted by the US election coverage, channel flippig between the newbunnies and teletotty of CNN, Foxx (for some whacky utterly biased McCainery) and even the grizzlies on BBC (why does Kirsty Wark dress like a hooker these days?)

Tonight wil be a late one for me, glued to the goggle box.

I guess this is probably the most seminal election in my lifetime. I really do feel that for once, the US could be guided by someone with a genuine understanding of the world outside the narrow confines of America. And that might - just possibly - bring the most powerful economy the world has ever known into the twenty first century. And we need this desperately. Within a decade China will be the new powerhouse with India close behind. The latent resources of Africa promise a revolution in that blighted continent. And if we have a leader in the West with the vision to understand that resources and energy must be put into resolving conflicts, whether in the middle east, Africa or Eastern Europe, there is hope for our children and our children's children and...

What happens tonight may shape the world we live in for the better.

We can but hope.

Eccentric

A note from Funkyville...
For my sins I rarely visit these pages, but made an exception during a recent idle credit-crunch moment.
This thread displays much of the confusion about shopping for equipment that I encounter frequently, which is hardly surprising. After all, no outlet can ever claim to be all things to all men; one size doesn't fit all, whatever the marketing nurds might want us to believe.
Customers want different things from their suppliers. There are those who merely want the lowest price and of course they can google forever, saving a nickle here and a dime elsewhere. That's a valid approach. Then there are those who want advice on a particular link in the chain. Always remember that any such advice is ultimately opinion (albeit based upon experience not merely of using a wide range of equipment but also knowledge of how the gear performs over a period, which is crucial; we see more broken equipment in our service department than any other dealer in Europe or possibly the world, and believe me there is a lot of very poorly made but sexy looking kit out there...)
Companies such as Funky, KMR and the others mentioned in these threads do our best not merely to offer impartial guidence but also to stress the important of trying before you buy. After all, it's ultimately how the musician or engineer perceives the sound that matters more than all the Slutzwords or sales-blurb in the world.
But there are other considerations that perhaps don't perculate into the buyers consciousness, but which are, from an experienced seller's standpoint, equally crucial.
There are items of equipment that we at Funky don't stock, and moreover which we won't stock. We take our after sales responsibilities extremely seriously; indeed, we spend over £100,000 a year maintaining a service department staffed by some of the most experienced techs in Europe to give our customers unrivalled support. After all, our clients are professionals who rely upon their gear for their living, so if a piece of equipment goes down, it is our responsibility to get it working immediately. And we've learnt over fifteen years that there are makes of equipment too troublesome to sell with any confidence. So we don't sell them. Sure, we won't slag them off - it's for the buyer to learn the lessons him or herself - but we can live without that level of grief, and prefer our customers to lead an equally hastle free existence.
We experience more problems with the new equipment we sell than the used, in no small part because our service department is efficient in carefully refurbishing the used gear that comes through. However, the unsuspecting musical public would be alarmed at the high proportion of new gear that is 'dead out of the box', particularly from some of the more expensive and boutique manufacturers. Many readers will know exactly what I mean. So selling equipment is only part of the story; offering prompt, professional support is, in our book, the be-all and end-all of equipment supply. Our clients appreciate this, and we're fortunate in having a large and loyal professional client base. And yes, we may get a little dispondent and appparently lackadaisical when we get callers concerned first, last and foremost with price. And of course we know that plenty of callers will ultimately buy directly from Mike at Vintage King or Fletcher at Mercenary in the belief that they'll save a few bucks, and why not? This stuff is expensive (I can't afford to buy the gear I sell!) But...if readers could see the volume of new or nearly new equipment sent to us for repair that has been directly imported, they'd realise the risks they run.
Of course, we can't finance our service department and sell equipment virtually at cost, but then this isn't our business. Ultimately we offer a service that includes keen prices, experienced advice, large purpose built demonstration facilities and comprehensive after sales (with over £80,000 of spare parts, to say nothing of £30,000 of state of the art test equipment). It's horses for courses. I won't claim that everyone wants or needs what we offer, and equally I won't criticise those with a different business model (but next time you speak to you usual supplier, just ask how many service techs he has ON STAFF; not freelances available at a few days notice, but in-house techs on hand for an immediate fix).
So it's important not to compare like with like. If you know what you want and are happy to take a risk, by all means shop wherever you can to get what you perceive to be the best deal. I have no problems with that. Alternatively, Nicky and Keith at KMR or many of the DV guys will offer a combination of good prices and good, professional advice (as, of course, do we). Vive la difference - long live competition. It keeps us all on our toes. But if you aspire to something a little more and want a bespoke rig, a room designing, building or kitting out, then there is an altogether different infrastructure of professionals who have spent a lifetime doing just this. It's an area where experience and technical qualifications are everything, as we find constantly when called in to resolve problems caused by bluffers who profess to be room designers or installation engineers.
Ultimately, the point of this rather too wordy note is to confirm everything that has gone before in this post - there are just as many levels of service as there are customer requirements, from box shifting to (say) the design and outfitting of a major new theatre in Nigeria or advising on a business plan, includng the refitting, of an international studio in South Africa (both of which projects I'm currently consulting on). In between, and every bit as important, are the needs of a musician in Rochdale going out on a limb to build his first modest recording studio or the guy in Croydon wanting to spice up his home recording rig. Alll are important, all warrant the same amount of time and attention and all are spending what is (for them) a huge amount of dosh on a project that they cannot afford to fail.
One size does not fit all. No company (or musician, come to that) is perfect. And just as there is no right or wrong way to record a vocal (up to a point) there is no perfect way to satisfy a customer's demands. All I would say is that every dealer I've seen mentioned in this thread is honest, is conscientous and does their utmost to offer the client the best equipment he or she can at the most affordable price.
We are all part of the same tight community of recordists, united by a love of music and a passion for audio quality. And I don't doubt that from time to time we all make mistakes. Equally, I have no doubt that we all bust our guts seeking to rectify these, lying awake at night worrying if a customer loses a single minute in downtime.
I am saddened by the culture of slagging gear, people, producers or dealers off on so many chatrooms, which is why I probably log on so rarely. Rather than revel in mean spiritedness, I much prefer to praise the generosity of so many in this industry who have taught me over the years, shared their tips and techniques and gone out of their way to encourage and assist my own musical journey. We are, as I said, all lucky to be members of such an open and generous community.
So shop around, my fellow Slutz. Decide what you want and need and you'll find someone out there able to supply. But is ain't a competition - the Gear Olympics. We sell creative tools for a creative job done by creative people and by and large, I'm honoured to fulfil that role.
Eccentric

I make no apologies for the somewhat theoretical nature of my last few posts. After all the collapse of capitalism and the end of the world as we know it doesn’t happen very often, does it? Er…not that it’s actually happened now, despite all the hysteria filling the front pages and the gleeful hand-rubbing manifested by a host of round the clock rolling-news stations.

A few weeks ago, I made the case for the government taking shares in financial institutions rather than merely handing over our financial future will-nilly (just as a year ago I pointed out the logic behind nationalising Northern Rock to ensure the valuable mortgage assets were protected and allowed to mature, to the advantage of all). Similarly, my last post argued for the reintroduction of stringent controls and oversight of the banking and related sectors.

Hey presto – and so it came to pass. But as Gordon ‘Chubby’ Brown smugly basks in the glory of saving our financial souls, I feel it only fair to point out that if smeggy muso in North London can spot the logic behind such moves, our government can hardly claim to be either visionary or radical in pressing the only buttons that realistically should be pressed. In other words, the scandal is that any alternative options should ever have been considered – that there should ever have been a debate about what steps to take.

If you stand on the railway tracks watching an express train bear down on you, it is hardly innovative thinking to jump out of the way. That so many argued in favour of staying put in case the inevitable disaster might be avoided by, say, the express dematerialising prior to the point of impact, is a condemnation of the paucity of economic and political common sense. Of course we had to step aside. There was no option.

By the end of the year, the ‘banking crisis’ that has so preoccupied the media will be a fading memory. We will, however, be facing something altogether more real – a problem that will start to impact each and every one of us, a crisis moreover that has been brewing for a decade (and one which I drew attention to nine months ago) – a recession marked by rising unemployment and inflation.

By and large, we no longer make anything in this country that the rest of the world particularly wants. This is no accident. Rather, the UK has quite deliberately fostered a spiv economy in recent years.

London has grown to become the world’s leading financial centre. The skyscrapers of Canary Wharf and the Carbuncles dominating the City skyline are home to just those Slick-Willy operators who have traded derivatives, written dodgy mortgages and splashed out cheap credit cards, which lie at the root of our current financial ills. But those days have gone. We are now entering a period of payback. We are already seeing a degree of financial caution enter the economy as you and I reduce our extended credit cards and overdrafts, stop borrowing against the inflated value of our homes (if we’re lucky enough to own one) and generally become more cautious about debt. Oh, sure – there’s plenty of dosh available for those who want to borrow, despite claims of credit crunch and frozen liquidity. After all, we have a fat, inflated banking sector that relies upon lending to justify its existence and generate the obscene profits required to cover its massive overheads. Easy money still slops around the system, the big difference being that we, the people, won’t get fooled again.

It’s payback time – literally.

Hmmm…therein lies a pretty big problem for Chubby’s hard-pressed exchequer. Because the UK economy is now driven by the financial sector and the easy taxes skimmed off their massive profits. Once those profits turn to losses and the financial sector shrinks to more sensible proportions, the government will have a massive black hole in its coffers. And how do we fill the gap?

By borrowing. A nation already in hock will lurch ever deeper into debt.

Manufacturing industry has been sacrificed over the last twenty years in favour of a strong pound (required to attract money into the country, or rather the City, from foreign investors). Education has been geared towards the so-called service industries (another euphemism for banking, insurance and the like). Indeed, our schools and universities now turn out more economists than engineers, physicists, chemists or linguists combined – a deliberate policy to feed the insatiable needs of the mushrooming banking industry. And a fat lot of good they've done us. Closer to home, it is not just factories that have closed. Where has the tax relief for the UK film industry gone? Why have we never seen any government support for the record industry, one of this country’s most successful export industries? Indeed, our creative industries have been increasingly run like banks, relying upon easy money from repackaging back catalogue or the ticker-tape of publishing receipts rather than investing time, talent and resources into developing the next generation of long-term creative talent required to bring precious foreign currency back to the country.

We are entering tough times, my friends. We have exported our manufacturing industries to the US, to China, to the Tiger economies of South East Asia. And in return? In return we’ve allowed financial services to drive the economy with their opaque sharp practices and dodgy derivatives.

The recession will be altogether more severe in the UK than in mainland Europe. It will bite deeper and will last longer. We’ll suffer higher unemployment and greater inflation than our trading partners who kept banking regulations in place, true to traditional lending and borrowing criterea.

Those who’ve spotted the signs will realise that if anything, I’m an adherent of Keynesian economic theory. Simply stated, John Maynard Keynes advocated that in difficult times, governments should borrow in order to invest in the national infrastructure – roads, schools, hospitals, education and suchlike. The upshot is the creation of jobs, which in turn ensures that consumers have continuing incomes to ensure that the economy stays buoyant while at the same time creating long-term assets of value which will generate the funds required to repay the debt. Sure, that’s a simplistic overview of the great man’s thinking, but it is relevant to what we’re about to face. Because with shrinking tax revenues, an explosion of expensive government debt resulting from the non-productive bank bail-out and a fragile manufacturing base, we will need all the help we can get to sustain our economy and maintain employment. A programme of state spending on public services is the only viable answer.

The problem is that we’ve already committed ourselves to borrowing billions to save the profligate lifestyles of the bloody bankers. Money that could have been invested in education, the NHS, roads, flood relief and a score of other essential projects has been used to buy shares in the Royal Bank Of Bleeding Scotland. So to raise additional funds brings great risk, and most particularly the risk of inflation.

The only way to realistically raise the money we need is to effectively print the stuff. This will have an immediate side effect of reducing the value of the currency, and as the pound sinks against the Dollar, the Yuan, the Yen and the Euro, imports will cost us more, including food and essential raw materials. Oh, of course this will mean that our exports will be correspondingly cheaper abroad but…what the hell do we have left to export? Cars? Forget it. Intellectual property? See my comments about record companies and movies above. Brainpower? Not now our education system is so far behind the rest of the developed world.

No, we must combine forthcoming economic measures with help for manufacturing industry, particularly exporters, and massive well directed investment in education - in traditional skills and trades rather than yet more feeble academic cop-outs such as Media Studies, Photography and Muffin Munching. Because unless we can reap the benefits of a falling pound by raising productivity and renewing our manufacturing base, we’ve had it. The economic decline will be long term. We will have sacrificed our children’s standard of living in return for a ludicrous short-term fix for the banks.

I could write at even greater length about the current crisis, but will do what I can to move on. In particular, I have a thousand questions welling up about the state of our recording industry at present, the impact of new technology and the means of delivery, possible ways of rebuilding what remains a uniquely creative and positive branch of UK industry and the extent to which access to the means of production (in other words – gear) is resulting in a revolution in the provision of high quality production values to musicians and engineers at an affordable cost.

These topics are linked to the overall state of our present and future economy, and the way that the unique and extraordinary talent we produce on these shores offers a very real role for the UK in the world economy of the future. I’ve been luck to have received several exceptional CD’s lately, made by artists in their homes or by their friends. What is missing is the business infrastructure required to add an extra level of production values and then deliver to the market on a basis that will provide a reasonable return and allow these artists to make a living from their music in order to devote the time and resources required to take their talent to the next level.

We have an extraordinary amount of musical talent in this small island. It is a scandal that the greatest music industry in the world has for so long turned its back upon such outstanding ability in favour of short-term, fast-buck returns.

There must be another way forwards, and I believe there is. Hopefully I can generate some ideas and stimulate a debate that might result in a community of original thought to address the double-edged problems of developing Internet technologies and transforming moribund business thinking. Perhaps together we can offer some radical solutions to basic problems that the modern music industry so woefully fails to address.

In other words…onwards and upwards rather than backwards and downwards.

Eccentric

I am old enough – ancient enough, I guess - to remember the golden age of Pyramid Selling.

Here’s how the scam worked;

At the top of the pyramid sat a slick salesman peddling snake-oil, cosmetics, household cleaners – pretty much anything in fact. Indeed, the product was pretty much irrelevant. What mattered was that Slick Willy claimed to have exclusive rights to some product or other that he reckoned would generate millions in profits for those lucky enough to be enfranchised to sell it to the general public.

However, in reality the basis of the business model was not flogging Zippy Jello, or whatever the product might be, but rather it relied upon the sale of franchises to other salesman, each of whom then had the right to sell a sub-franchise to others, and so on. Effectively each franchisee bought the right to share in the promised retail harvest, lured by the pledge of wealth beyond their dreams.

Hmmm…so what these agents actually purchased was the right to recruit yet more agents, each of whom paid dearly for the franchise and each of whom in turn recruited yet more gullible salesmen, every one of whom stumped up his or her life savings for the privilege. And the upshot? A geometric progression of salesmen claiming to sell Zippy Jello to housewives but in reality hustling to recruit more and more members into the scheme. From each entry fee, a diminishing commission was paid up the line, with each footsoldier skimming of a percentage before forwarding the balance to his or her recruiting sergeant until the residue finally stopped at the top of the tree, or pyramid, and nestled comfortably in the pocket of our entrepreneurial friend, Mr. Slick Willy, by now a multi millionaire from the proceeds of his neat little scam.

What these schemes sold was not the perceived product, in our case the wonderful Zippy Jello, but rather the right to charge others for a share in the money making scam.

Of course, this was – and is – fraud. Because although the early recruits pocketed a fortune in commission from a percentage of franchising rights down the line, as membership diluted from tens to hundreds to thousands, the supply of naïve punters dried up leaving those who joined last with no means of recouping their investment, let alone making a profit or even a living.

Let’s face it, Zippy Jello is junk. But then, who cares? Not Slick Willy. His money has been made by enlisting agents who in turn enlist other agents who in turn…each one of whom filter a percentage into snake-eyed Willy’s snakeskin wallet.

Of course, the authorities moved in to stamp out the fraud as soon as it became a nuisance, but there was a problem. The reality is that legislation is always one step behind the fraudster’s ability to devise new variations on themes that avoid or evade the law. Hence a continuing hopscotch of sly villains exploiting loopholes and scam-artists constantly finding new schemes, always one step ahead of the game.

Until…

The current financial crisis is merely the collapse of the greatest pyramid scam ever. In place of Zippy Jello, we have the ultimate in must-have products – cash, or rather debt.

At the top of the pyramid sit a bunch of fat-cat bankers who have catapulted virtually unlimited debt in the market place. By convincing their avaricious mates that debt equals cash, they have sold pieces of paper, pyramid fashion, and recruited an ever larger network of greedy agents, each desperate to buy, repackage and then resell these chunks of debt down the line until…inevitably the day arrives when the supply of cash to purchase these phoney ‘derivatives’ dries up like the Colorado River in summer and the proverbial shit hits the fan. Because, as with Slick Willy’s pyramid selling scheme, this business model can only be sustained if there is an infinite number of punters queuing up for a piece of the action and it just ain’t so.

And where, ultimately, is the source of the filthy lucre that fuelled this scam? Well, sad to say it is me, it is you, it is granny, granddad, the guy next door – all of us. Everyone with a bank account, a pension, a credit card, a mortgage (or paying rent to a buy-to-let mortgage holder) or a savings account has providing the oil to grease the fraudulent wheels. But our cash is not infinite and inevitably a point arrived where the money supply was not sufficient to fuel the sprawling pyramid of debt-laden derivatives that were generating unseemly buckets of profits, bonuses and salaries for our pyramid-selling banker mates.

And so, just like Slick Willy’s scam, the entire kit and caboodle has imploded. And it did not just unwind gradually, but has collapsed virtually overnight. The down is so much faster than the up, and we are left facing stark panic in the banking community with entire nations (such as Iceland) collapsing, having lived high on the hog from the tax proceeds of inflated profits generated by this pyramid selling scam.

So what should we do?

Nothing.

That’s right – nothing.

We should stand back and let the entire dodgy edifice collapse.

Whatever happens, there will be pain. The question is, who should bear this pain?

There can be no clearer indicator of where vested interests lie than the obscene panic shown by Hank Paulson and Ben Bernackie in the US and Gordon ‘Chubby’ Brown over here.

The sight of ex fat-cat banker and current Secretary of the US Treasury, Paulson, going down on bended knee and begging congress to pass his ill thought-out, hastily prepared and ultimately useless trillion dollar ‘rescue package’ will live long in my mind. Effectively, this was a spoiled brat who had squandered his pocket money on a weekend binge, begging dad to fork out more dosh so that the party can go on. Paulson and his mates have a way of life to maintain, after all. How dare we allow the party to fizzle out before they’ve drunk their fill?

The authorities reaction to this crisis is arse about tit, if you’ll excuse the vernacular. And I guess this says an awful lot about where official priorities lie.

The problems arose because of ‘deregulation’ – the removal of any sane checks and balances on the banking system. Whereas traditionally building societies borrowed from investors and lent to proceeds to members in order to assist with house purchase and banks invited deposits, lending a modest multiple to business and commerce to fund operation or expansion, Thatcher and Reagan cut away all sensible checks and balances and opened the door for an ‘anything goes’ banking sector. They confidently told us that the market knows best, that we should leave them to get on with it anyway, anyhow, anywhere. Banks lent our money, they lent their money and then they lent money that they would never have. Our dosh was invested in dodgy pyramid selling schemes and massive salaries, bonuses and stockholder’s dividends dished out to cronies and fellow travellers along the way. Tens of thousands of reckless spendthrifts made millions or even billions and we, the people, paid the price.

And are these greedy bankers dipping into their own private reserves to fill the gap in their vaults? Are they hell. It’s the innocent who pay the price – the Cat’s Protection League, the pensioners, the children’s charities and local authorities.

The starting point in any measures to address the crisis should be regulation. Only then – when a strict framework of supervision is in place – should we even consider whether or not to inject cash into the system to restore some kind of equilibrium. The current approach is utter madness.

Look, we know that the international monetary and banking systems are totally screwed. So how are the authorities choosing to react? By pouring financial oil on the flames. Pumping trillions into a flawed market will only serve to perpetuate a bankrupt system. Unless and until we have legislated for a strict set of checks and balances, imposing a supervisory and regulatory system with real teeth to ensure that the excess of greed and moral turpitude that motivates these despicable financial Slick Willy’s is controlled, we should stand back and watch as dog eats dog.

When this crisis first arose I was clear that the authorities should stand back and allow the stinking edifice to collapse. They want a free market? Let them have it. And under their rules, the strong will gobble up the weak (witness the battle between Citibank and Wells Fargo for Wachovia; there is plenty of dosh in the system to snap up a wounded competitor as Lloyds did with HBOS).

And what has government intervention actually achieved? Without exception, it has made matters worse. With every bailout, the Footsie and Dow have crashed. Why? Because these bankers are masters at conning the authorities. The more money our representatives slap on the table, the more it becomes obvious that so long as the market manipulates our purse strings, we’ll donate oodles more. A trillion dollars? Poo…if it was that easy to get congress to vote such a massive sum, why not squeal a little louder and get another trillion? And another…after all, this will keep the bankers safely in their mansions. It is only we, the people, who will suffer. We will have the debts. We will pay though higher taxes, increased unemployment, cutbacks in schools and hospitals and public services.

No, my friends. Let the chickens come home to roost. Let the banks deal with problems of their own making. Rather than invest time and, more importantly, OUR money in cleaning up the mess, we should roll back the clock, understand that we can no longer allow these reckless financial snake-oil salesmen to write their own laissez-faire rules and legislate a set of honest, honourable and legally binding laws to govern their behaviour.

After all, it’s our money, our lives - our future.

Eccentric

P.S. Want to buy the exclusive rights to sell Zippy Jello in your neighbourhood? Only a thousand bucks, and you could make millions. Give me a call, or better still, have a word with my agent, Henry Paulson…

I’ve been meaning to post my take on the jolly-old goings on in the gilded palaces of Wall Street for some time, but whenever I’m about to put finger to keypad, another twisty-turny chapter unfolds.

Ultimately, none of what has happened in the past week has changed my underlying attitude - that we, the people, are being taken for one great, big gullible ride.

Everywhere you turn are newspaper articles elucidating in infinitesimal detail the so called ‘background’ to this ‘so-called’ crisis.

Bullshit.

We have passed through a decade in which traditional banking principles have gone to the wall, substituting blatant self-interest for customer services. Rather than offering interest for deposits and then lending this cash to borrowers at a higher rate and making juicy profits from the margin charged, banks became players in their own right, gambling on ‘investments’ offering a promise of fabulous rewards. Having gambled all our (the depositor’s) money, they then gambled money they didn’t even have, effectively issuing IOU’s to support their reckless trades. And to top it all, these latterday spivs paid themselves (and their institutional backers) huge bonuses based upon future profits anticipated from these dodgy deals. For instead of lending money (for mortgages or corporate buyouts, for example) and reaping a return over five ten or twenty years, the projected profits were immediately flogged off at a small discount to other banks together with the debts.

Bingo – money for nothing.

This is madness of the highest order. This is like a record company signing an act for ten thousand quid and immediately selling it on to another label for fifty grand before a track has been cut – cashing in on imagined profits rather than actually selling any records (sound familiar Mr. Branson? Wasn’t this Virgin’s business model in the 1980’s? And where are you now…?) Or to take another example, it was like developing an oil well with the potential to general a million bucks profit over twenty years and counting all the profit in year one (and paying handsome bonuses all round on this imagined profit). Which is exactly what Enron did before it was found out.

So what is the common link between Enron, our dodgy record companies and the banking system? Why, shareholders funds, of course. As long as the general public is pumping money into the corporate coffers, the scam works a dream and palms are greased all round. However, the moment this pyramid of phoney sales stalls, not merely does the process go into reverse, it collapses completely. Witness Enron. Witness whole swathes of record companies that suddenly disappeared into the maws of a few majors in the late 1980’s. And witness the current crisis on Wall Street.

So what is the answer? A Trillion Dollar bail-out? Bollocks. This is being foisted upon the gullible masses by spokesmen for the banks who are looking for yet more funds to support their lavish lifestyles. They offer nothing in return – it’s a one sided bargain – and merely claim that the alternative is economic disaster for all concerned. If so, then why not trade their debts for shares? Nationalisation or part nationalisation, in other words? Not a bit of it. They want the dosh without an ounce of accountability or anything of value in return.

This is blackmail, pure and simple.

So, what should we do?

The banks claim they want the market to rule, so let the market rule.

Let the weak go to the wall or be eaten by those who have stood aside whilst games were played. This is not an economic crisis, this is a banking crisis and I, for one, don’t care two hoots if a raft of banks collapse into cess pits of their own making. I don’t want my dosh to bail them out. Indeed, if I have any say over how government trillions are spent, I would rather donate every last, red, mortgaged cent to the third world. This would have infinitely more beneficial long term results for me, for you – for us all. A trillion dollars invested in Africa would pay massive dividends over the next decade for the world economy, and therefore for everyone. But if half of Wall Street goes bankrupt tomorrow, how will I suffer? Will mortgage rates or interest rates go through the roof? No. Competition will ensure continued equilibrium in the market place. It always has, it always will. Sure, money may become harder to get for risky ventures, highly geared leverage buyouts (watch your back, Guy Hands…Citibank are getting twitchy) and the like, but for crying out loud, it was all this greedy rampant financial nonsense that got us into the present mess in the first place.

Wall Street wants our trillions so they can carry on playing money games and feathering their corporate nests, not to reintroduce sanity to the money markets.

So let the investment bankers rot in their own empty vaults. It will make not one jot of difference to you, to me, to the man next door or to Uncle Tom Cobbley and all. We were never players in the fat cat’s game, and I’m damned if we should pick up the tab so they can go back to the roulette tables and pocket yet more phoney bonuses for doing less of a job than a workaday postman or a street cleaner or even the average jobbing musician, come to that. We can do their jobs in our sleep, and a damned site more responsibly, I bet. I doubt they can do ours.

So I sit on the sidelines chuckling as the panic mounts. And if I know one thing, it’s this – if Wall Street collapses it will make not one jot of difference to the likes of you or me. Life will go on and in six months time, we’ll have forgotten all about this ‘crisis’. But if we offer up our hard earned taxes to these greedy usurers, we will suffer. Other, far more vital, public spending will have to be cut to pay for featherbedding the banks. Schools hospitals, third world debt, social security and other essential services required for a civilised society will be starved of funds, and why?

Because we gave the bankers all our dosh, that’s why.

And what will they give us in return?

That’s right. You guessed it. Fuck all.