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Listed below are comments made by Turron between Tuesday, 13th January 2009 and Wednesday, 8th July 2009.

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Governor snubbed 3:04pm on 08 Jul 2009 The Bank of England doesn't have an unblemished record as a regulator. As pointed out above, the FSA was created specifically in reaction to the BCCI fiasco. Regulators may believe that they are in control but they don't know what they don't know until it is too late.

The lessons from the banking crisis seem to be that different forms of regulatory framework don't seem to have made much difference. Countries which have weathered the storm a little better than us have a wide range of regulatory structures.
Not just any mess, an M&S mess 12:42pm on 07 Jul 2009 ... it is possible to characterise the LAPFF position as a preference for finding a chief executive in panicky hurry rather than in a methodical and sensible fashion ...

It is, but only if the person making the argument finds the idea of having 12 months to find a new executive an unrealistic timescale. Most of us, I suspect, would think that it was quite long enough and that M&S have been dragging their heels on the issue for quite long enough.
Who to believe? 06:13am on 02 Jul 2009 The only thing we know about forecasts is that they are generally wrong. The sensible question to ask about these figures is how big is the error likely to be?

We know that forecast error increases as we increase the specificity of the forecast (the number of elements that we are forecasting within the total or the specificity of a date at which something could be achieved). The debate about spending plans is, at best, entertaining. To believe that it relates to real numbers would be a mistake.
He failed to lead 2:24pm on 19 May 2009 There is no question that Martin was defective as a Speaker of the House. That made him a lightning rod for the current furore over expenses. His removal won't eliminate the problems over expenses and the MPs baying for his hide are in for a shock if they believe that is the case.

The reality is that many of the House suffered the delusion that what they were doing was not only within the rules but untouchable - remember how Alan Duncan responded to questions by his fellow panellists on 'Have I got News for You?' "It's great isn't it?" That insouciance is what caused the problem - Martin didn't help but the whole system was based on collusion between a group of people who felt they were underpaid and who had been given the nod that allowances were 'up for grabs' and the Fees office.

When can we examine the wider issue of expenses for office, secretarial and travel - some of those numbers are mind-boggling. When can we examine how many hours a year an MP demonstrably spent on his job in the House, in Committee, in his constituency or on a trip which helped to resolve his understanding of a specific problem?

If you want to save money in the House of Commons, get rid of at least half the MPs and don't bother to replace them.
Summit to bash Sarkozy? 10:50am on 11 Feb 2009 I didn't hear much about EU rules when the Treasury started pumping cash into our banks and suggesting that they start making loans available for UK borrowers.

Certainly Sarkozy is a maverick, who doesn't seem to have thought very deeply about the wider issues of propping up Peugot. If he is so keen on underpinning French employment then why not put money into Toyota's French plant, too?

My guess is that EU rules will sit quietly in a corner, gathering dust, until we are no longer 'living in an emergency' and there is a fully fledged appraisal of just what has been happening since the 2nd half of last year.
The Bush Conundrum 11:48am on 13 Jan 2009 16 has some notes on Pepfar including:

- a concern that too much of the funding is concerned with abstinence. The slogan "abstinence until marriage" underpins the philosophy of the project. Life saving condoms play no part in Aids education supported by the programme, while religious organisations are used to deliver care.
- The lion's share of Pepfar funding is used to purchase life-saving anti-retrovirals (ARV) from large US pharmaceutical corporations that make massive profits in the process.

Well, it's supposed to be the test of a first class intelligence to hold two contradictory ideas in your head simultaneously. You passed.

Congress has determined that over half of the Pepfar funds are to be spent on treatment programmes, including antiretroviral treatment, care for associated opportunistic infections and nutritional support for people living with HIV/AIDS.

In countries with generalised HIV epidemics, at least half of all money directed towards preventing sexual HIV transmission should be for ?activities promoting abstinence, delay of sexual debut, monogamy, fidelity, and partner reduction?. If this is not complied with then the Global AIDS Coordinator must report to Congress within 30 days on the reasons behind the shortfall.

So both the points have some validity but is the "abstinence before marriage" bandwagon getting in the way of the treatment dog? Not if the guidelines Congress has set out are followed.

As to the other point, would you rather that the programme did not offer anti-retrovirals to people already living with HIV?

This seems to be a complex programme which attempts to deal with the problems of HIV spread and transmission as well as those who are already living with the disease. It has already been amended once and no doubt will be modified in future years as the environment changes.

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