City Traders, Angels and Rogue's

A rogue is  defined by dictionary.com as: a "dishonest, scoundrel, who can be playful, a tramp or a vagabond." Quite a formidable list of adjectives I would say so how can this term rogue become synonymous with the work city traders?

City traders who work in Investment Banks take a gamble on what ever their area is, which may be things like  currencies or commodities, and they basically gamble on whether the prices will go up or down.
For example, if the trader thinks the price of oil is rising, from $75 a barrel, they might promise to buy oil at $75 in 3 months' time. If, right and oil hits $100, then he has made $25. If oil falls to $50, then he will have to pay the difference, $25. Or worse, it could fall to $25 and he's lost $50. This is what occurs but on a bigger scale. This happens very quickly in reality and decisions are made after a very short periods of deliberation. The reality is that individuals can make immense amounts of money or huge loses in moments. The back office is the function that checks how much the bank is gaining or losing in the day and are meant to be the whistle blowers when things go wrong, however this is not always the case.

Over the last 20 years there have been several high profile so called Rogue Traders, marketed as immoral, greedy, unruly pariah's. Nick Leeson is perhaps the most famous British export of the rogue trading variety. He managed to lose the bank over 1 billion pounds, which wiped out its reserves and led to the 230 year bank collapsing.Activities of investment banks and traders have become even more under the spot light after the devastating effects of the so called credit crunch and subsequent recession. The most recent city trader to have been accused of being a rogue trader was Kweku Adoboli a trader at the Swiss investment bank UBS, has been accused of losing around £1.3 billion over a three year period and hiding these losses probably with his knowledge of the back office. Although  after the recession, more and more pressure was heaped among banks to have even tighter controls of their finances and bonus cultures; more work still needs to be done to protect the public and the economies wealth at large.

I predict a riot!

I have wanted to write about last weeks riots for about, umm a week. I took a step back due to every man and his dog having something to say on the topic and I thought I'd wait until the dust settled a little to include my two pennies worth of analysis.

The trigger
Thursday 4th August 2011 saw the shooting of a man Mark Duggan in Tottenham, North London. Reports suggest that there was a gun found on the seen. Initial reports stated that a gun was fired which supposedly belonged to Duggan, subsequently this view was revised by an  IPCC report who stated that the gun found at the scene wasn't fired. Reports state that Duggan's death  led to a distinct lack of care from the police as they failed to keep the family of Mark Duggan informed of the progress of the investigation.  A peaceful protest was started by some members of the Tottenham community who wanted answers from the police, they went to Tottenham police station to demand some answers and were ignored for up to three hours. Now reports are a bit shady as to what happened next, apparently some the peaceful protesters got annoyed and started attacking the police. Another explanation was that the police were heavy handed with a 16 year old girl. This was the trigger to the riots. After this unrest and looting  spread to the Wood Green, Brixton, Clapham, and Ealing areas of London and before long it spread to other cities in the UK such as Leeds, Birmingham and Nottingham.

The background 
Riots on this scale have not been seen in the UK ever, the Brixton riots of 1985 were triggered by the police  shooting of a woman, Cherry Groce suspected of harbouring her son who was wanted by the police. The Broadwater Farm estate riots  happened a week later in Tottenham after two deaths of women after searches were taken place in their houses. This  then led to a death of a police officer, PC Keith Blakelock. Therefore, riots in these places had been triggered by deaths and injuries in some way precipitated by police actions.

The widespread looting and police attacking which occurred in Tottenham on Saturday 6th August 2011 evening people point to a few reasons, some point to the animosity between local ethnic minority groups and the police. Since 1998 according to Inquest, 333 deaths have occurred in police custody, and no convictions have been made against police officers. The most high profile case was that of Smiley Culture, early on this year. Another explanation could be the high rate of stop and search that ethnic minorities have faced.


The looters 

The looting incidents I would say are a separate incident to the peaceful protest and some might say the reactionary riots in Tottenham on 4th August. Many media reports have labelled the perpetrators as feral youths (Kit Malthouse, Deputy Mayor of London) and an article by the Telegraph labelled the looters as an underclass. Contrastingly a guardian article paints a different view of the looters, young and old from both genders and a variety of races. Some suggest it had something to do with disaffection, high levels of unemployment, greed, the gang problem or the 'me-first' society. In my opinion it was a combination of all of these reasons and explanations, but to paint the people who were looting all as feral, lower class black people is grossly inaccurate.

The solution?
History has shown that once in every generation or so, these things just happen, you can have a marxist view of it where the underclass are rising up against the ruling classes but that will not solve the problem in this capitalist, individualistic society. So about a week after the baffling events of what has been labelled "The August Riots", what is the solution? I am not going to suggest a cure for all social ills of the UK society, far from it, to be honest what do I know? I am just a girl from slough, however, here are my suggestions as to different ways that issues mentioned above can be dealt with.

1. Tackle unemplyment and lack of aspiration in some inner city areas this may take the form of community projects, volunteering. Trying to increase activity amongst society.  
2. I am not anti police, they have an incredibly hard job to do but increase understanding of what they do amongst UKs minorities and marginalised populations, and also hold them accountable for the deaths that have occurred under their watch.  
3. some people have pointed to the education system which should be more rounded and specialised to try and tailor to all, not just those with an academic inclanation. 
4. Get people to take and understand that every action has a consequence.  

Here are some of the solutions that I have thought of they are not exhaustive, after all I am living in a relatively untouched part of Berkshire...

Good A- Levels and Bad A- Levels, is there really such a thing?

Sorry guys my blogs are very sporadic, I am ashamed of this, to make it up to my blog followers I am blogging now. I came across this topic a few months ago 'good' A-Levels and 'bad' ones. Those of you that live in the UK, know that A-Levels are a route for going to university. Millions of students have finished  them this year culminating in highly stressful exam period. Those of you that are choosing your subjects and have just finished their GCSEs, take note. Most people do A- Levels to got to University, a good university. However, some of the top ten universities have a kind of hidden list for which A-level subjects that they like and which ones they would not approve of, usually the ones they like are earmarked as traditional subjects. These traditional subjects include: English, History, Physics, Maths, Biology, Philosophy, Chemistry, Further maths, Geography, Economics to name but a few.

These Russell group universities and Oxbridge have also published lists of non preferred subjects (ones that they don't like) such as Business studies, Media studies, I.T. and  Sociology. This is not to say that you won't gain admission into a "good university" with one of these subjects as your 3 or four, but if you have more than two and want to go to a top 10 or 20 university (depending on the course) think about your choice. It is unfair that the system is black listing subjects many of which many students aren't aware of.

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer

I recently was in the Question Time ( A UK panel show where members of the public can ask questions to politicians and public figures) audience and someone asked: In this time of economic uncertainty, should our oversees aid budget be ring fenced? Me trying to lay low, did not voice my real opinions, so I chose to do it now. The argument is that in a time of austerity, the UK needs all the money it could get to keep the country afloat. The common lines of "why is it our problem?"  "We should focus on ourselves before trying to solve other peoples problems."

Why the overseas aid should be ring fenced.

1. Its like 0.5% of GDP (not event 1% of the wealth of the UK), more money gets wasted by hiring agency staff long term in the NHS, or over charging managers why not let that money give people vaccines from ridiculously preventable problems like diarrhoea. 
2.  The prime minister says its morally right... but i'll get back to this
3. They kind of owe them... Ok lets trace back to history many "commonwealth" countries were highly exploited for natural resources including people which has led to the generations of "poorness". Pilfering people, gold, cocoa, bauxite, tea, silk, the list can go on and on. Its actually payment, high time.

So here are a few reasons why I think that the "aid" budget should stay as it is. The common image of aid recipients is an image of a black child, with a distended stomach, with flies around him/her. This paints a helpless un realistic picture of people in aid recipient countries, who are resourceful, resilient

A lost generation of unemployed

Soo in amongst the gloom and doom something really well even more depressing. Youth  unemployment is increasing in the UK, spurred on by the poor economic climate, in general unemployment and the long term unemployed are every governments head ache. The new "coalitions" shake up of the benefits system which aims to get more people in work and make it pay to work is David Cameron's brain child. What about the people who have spent two or more years out of work? What about the people who have only known unemployment, parents out of work, whole communities job less?

Work by Seligman whose work spans over 50 years would give an explanation as to why its so hard to break out of the jobless cycle. Seligman's learned helplessness model came from a slightly unethical research study done in 1971. It involved conditioning dogs. In the first phase, there were three groups of dogs, in group 2, dogs were administered an electric shock that they could end after pressing a level. In group 3, the dog was unable to stop the shocks. The next part of the experiment, both groups were put in a position where they could jump over a fence to avoid shocks. Dogs in group 2 did this, however dogs in group three exhibited symptoms of extreme depression.  After a few attempts, the dog gave up trying to stop the shocks. This state, known as learned helplessness is the state of when an individual feels the position they are in life is a stable state. They may feel that what ever they try and do, they cannot get out of their situation.

This can be extended to people in unemployment, who may be used to living from benefits, and cannot see a way out, or after applying for tens, or even hundreds of jobs, being discouraged to even find or apply. This isn't just for people who are in lower paid jobs this can extend to the chief executive that may have been made redundant 18 months ago, or the university graduate who finds it increasingly hard to jump through the vast amount of hoops it takes to land a  graduate level job.

The way to over come these feelings are to

1. keep positive, after job application 100, its very hard to keep positive, but keep trying. 
2. Do something, volunteering and attend free courses, just contact places like your local action for  employment centre (A4e) or Shaw trust centre. 
3. Think about retraining, certain professions such as nursing, teaching and social work offer burseries for post graduate entry retraining; but make sure you really want to that job first before you dive in.

The governments new agency's are getting paid on results, the amount of people they place successfully into jobs, which in theory as a tax payer makes sense, however in reality, may not work so perfectly. Every unemployed worker has complex needs, skills and experiences. It just remains to be seen that each agency needs to be able to appreciate and have the tools available to be able to get more people into sustainable employment.

Are Black women less attractive?

Yes, so this story has been plastered all around the "bloggersphere" ( i hate that phrase) for the last  week. The interest centres around a research paper which was reported in the psychology magazine "Psychology Today" by a London School of Economics, researcher Dr Satoshi Kanazawa. As a psychology researcher and a black female, I thought I would clarify some details.

Firstly social psychological phenomena such as attractiveness is an extremely troublesome concept to measure, in saying that it doesn't mean that people don't try. As part of a national longitudinal (over a number of years) research study Add Health, (National longitudinal study of adolescent health), measured  physical attractiveness on a subjective level, ( asking the individual to rate themselves on a 5 point scale) and on an objective level (asking a group of people about an individual's attractiveness). At the end of each interview they rated themselves and each other on a 5 point scale, 1= very unattractive, 2= unattractive, 3= above average, 4= attractive, 5= attractive. Each persons attractiveness was rated by three different people over a 7 year period.

 The results showed that generally women were rated as more attractive than  men, apart from black women, who were rated consistently lower on physical attractiveness than any other ethnic group including, Asian, Native American and Caucasian women.  What's more, black women rated themselves as consistently higher on physical attractiveness than any other ethnic group. Contrastingly this was not the case for black men who were rated subjectively and objectively as more physically attractive than black women. The research attempted to explain this due a higher supposed average of body mass Index or BMI of black women and higher level of testosterone, suggesting that black women have more masculine features.

Ok so i've done my best with reeling off the research methods, its hard as I cannot get access to the real research paper. Obviously this has received a large amount of press interest and has been labelled a pseudo- science, or racist rubbish. The researcher Dr Kanazawa, has a track record of research which is controversial and headline grabbing.

I have a hard time agreeing that one can just dismiss this as a racist piece of research, due to the researcher just summarizing what the individuals in the study reported, he was reflecting their views. Asking people to rate other individuals attractiveness levels is not the best way of rating attractiveness, but it is one of the only ways. That's not to say Dr Kanazawa is absolved of blame, but research is really not really about him, or LSE (the university that he is associated with). It's about society as a whole and the media who I blame for successive negative images of black females since time began.  I don't buy the claim that higher levels of BMI and testosterone have any thing to do with this. Its only in the last 20 - 30 years that black women have been seen as not strange for having "wide noses", "big" lips and wiry hair, our looks are being slightly accepted. Also some individuals are beginning to see typically black features such as having bigger lips and larger bums as a beauty ideal, seeking collagen injections, and  other enhancements.

It seems like Dr Kanazawa will always publish controversial research but there is an aspect here of not shooting the messenger. His methodology is questionable and his conclusions arduous but he is tapping into social issues that very few people want to talk about.

So what if i think that fat people are lazy?...

Everything we do, and how we behave is governed by our experiences, stereotypes and biases. Its a fact of life. In the workplace this is also the case, thoughts we have about blondes, or tall people are people with red hair, are all governed by our preconceptions.

Perception is a way that humans can make mental short cuts and put people into boxes. However, percpetions, stereotypes and biases affect a lot, especially the way we behave and react to people in the workplace. So if we have a preconception that all fat people are lazy, or all blonde people are students, we would have to adapt these feelings to ensuure that we don't wrongly judge people or behave badly to them in the workplace. An article in The Voice Newspaper looks at the prejuidice faced by people with dread locks conjures up images of drug use. This obviously is not the reality, not every person with dreadlocks is like this, however some times dreadlocked people are treated with more suspision.



Famous psychological experiements have looked at how perception affects group behaviour and decision making accuracy. Solomon Asch in 1958 designed a condition where a group of people had to solve a simple task of deciding which line was the same length as a sample line.

The groups of 8-10 people had to individually say the correct answer, that exhibit 1 is the same length as line A. Out of the 8-10 people, only one was being tested, everyone else in the team were actors. Asch wanted to test the power of group conformity, so all the people but the person being tested said the wrong answer, and the person being tested was monitered to observe how many times that person said the wrong answer (conformed) or said the correct answer.

Asch repeated the procedure with 18 sets of bars and the actors were instructed to offer wrong answers 12 out of 18 times. The findings were surprising to the experiementer, 74% of people conformed to the majority at least once.

Asch commented on this and stated that "The tendency to conformity in our society is so strong that reasonably intelligent and well-meaning young people are willing to call white black. This is a matter of concern. It raises questions about our ways of education and about the values that guide our conduct."


The implications of this in the work place and society are great. Human beings are extremely sociable and essentially want to be liked. This explains how some bad policies can be made by policical parties, organisations or social groups. It shows the extent of how we may not always follow our thoughts and feelings about particular things, just to keep the peace.