Advent 3

Volume 3 (Baltim to Brail): Bank of England.

An unusually modest admission here: macro-economics (and micro for that matter) is not a subject that Big Fat Pig has mastered. However I did have a part in running a medium-sized business for two decades and acted as an adviser to a large number of businesses of all sizes so I have been prey to the machinations of our central bank, principally the control of interest rates - a power ceded to it by Gordon Brown in 1997, one of his better moves.

The Bank, despite being the de facto  central bank for two and a half centuries, was not nationalised until 1946 by the Attlee government. Rather against my best instinct the Bank's logo reproduced here is the new 'modern' version adopted for no good reason in 2022.

The Bank issues our bank notes (remember those?), sets interest rates and administers the funny money (quantitative easing) created by spendthrift government. Its principal target is to keep inflation at or under 2% pa. Those of us long enough in the tooth to remember the 70s can only applaud this target. I can only wish the Bank good luck.

Advent 2

 Volume 2 (Annu to Baltic): Antietam, the Battle of the.

I wake to the news that Joe Biden has issued a pardon to his son Hunter. Had Trump taken such a step, there would be quite proper liberal outrage. Enough said.

Today's entry again finds us in the United States. That crucible of the American Dream, the Civil War, heated to its bloodiest day on 17 September 1862 on and around the banks of the River Antietam. Thule de Thulstrup's artistic imagining of the battle is reproduced below.

The outcome of the battle was that the incursion into the Union States by Lee's field army was rebuffed by McClellan's larger force. McClellan has been judged by history as over-cautious. His President, Abraham Lincoln, came to share that view and dismissed him in November 1862 for his failure to pursue Lee's retreating army.

Lincoln stands to me as the exemplar of how a legal traing can incubate decency. Consider these words from his first Inaugural Address delivered on 4 March 1861and ask yourself whether either of the candidates in the recent election would be caable of such modest dignity and sagacity:

The Chief Magistrate derives all his authorityfrom the people, and they have conferred none upon him to fix terms for the separation of the States. The people themselves can do this also if they choose; but the executive, as such, has nothing to do with it. His duty is to administer the present government, as it came to his hands, and to transmit it, unimpaired by him, to his successor.

That term 'the Chief Magistrate' refers to the head of state and is an echo of the same terminology used by sixteenth century constitutionalist Sir Thomas Smith. Legal theory does sometimes have a purpose.

Advent 1

Volume 1 (A to Anno): Absentee Voting, U.S.

As you might have noticed we have just had an American presidential election. But don't worry I'm not going to spoil the pre-Christmas mood with a trademark tirade against Trump although I can't make any promises about tomorrow.

The history of absentee voting (and here I am principally concerned with postal votes) is (honest guv) interesting. As with so much else in American history, the Civil War prompted its birth. Eleven Union states permitted soldiers on active duty an absentee ballot. After the war other states gradually followed suit and federal legislation eventually arose in World War II, provoked because only a fraction of the huge armed forces negotiated the labyrynthine regulations to cast a vote. By the latter part of the conflict a more efficient system was thought desirable for the by now nine-and-a-half-million service men and women scattered around the globe. The advent of postal voting was not without its controversies. Predictable Southern states feared a widening of the franchise beyond their racist registration laws. Republicans feared that the military vote would be tilted towards the left. Plus ca change.

Today's political right still fear the postal vote and the left's alleged greater proficiency at exploiting the system. This issue will come into focus again because we are surely going to encounter agitation for absentee voting via the internet. And on that subject we encounter something unusual - The Pig doesn't know where he stands on the issue. Universal suffrage is one of our greatest societal adornments (even when it gets the answer wrong) but a romantic part of me still wants to see people exercising some effort in making their vote. 

So there we have it, rather a dry opening to our calendar. That is the way the magic number takes us.