A persent History of Ian Rosmarin

The last few days i found it hard to write I don't know being the emotional pressure of getting my exam results (or the two days when I didn't have my exam results) but it's true to say that if but I did have writer's block. Over the next two weeks I need to apply for training contracts. The result is my blogs are going to get shorter and shorter as I prepare for the next stage of my life. I survived the boat that you could not leave now I have to survive the easer year (e.g. not the GDL)

First the good news I passed my exams!

Then the bad last night I spent three hours on a Thames riverboat with some absolute strangers. It was a JNF (Jewish National fund) fundraiser. As I sat there in finally hit me what is wrong with Britain's Jewish community. Most of the people seem to have known each other from the age of nine. I talked to a field worker who worked for the charity according to her it was a growing problem.

Speaking from personal experience I happen to know that Britain's Jewish community is now famous as some think it shouldn't be famous for. Among nonreligious Jews like myself we have the highest divorce rates of any community. Many reasons are given but the one that stands in my mind and many psychologists believe is absolutely true is that we married too young. Among other middle-class people most people don't get married to their early 30s among Britain's Jewish community we now get married in our early 20s.

Now I got to go...

Today I should have got to my GDL however I did not...

The reason was a strange one I had not given them my locker key and I have just found out that College policy is not to give results out till your paid for it. I did pay for the dam key however due to a technical glitch I will not get my results till midday tomorrow.

I found myself pacing around my work placement I will not know whether I passed or not till midday tomorrow. Meanwhile like yesterday I have to look forward too anther sleepless night of worry and pain.

How to lose Friends...

It all really started a week ago I was going on a date with a girl at the was in two minds to move out with this friend of mine. They had offered to let me move out with them for a reduced rent and I was really tempted. I'm not sure what that out of the following finally sank our friendship and I'm not really sure if they'll really aware that they have upset me. Anyway we needed to talk about moving out and I wanted to be extremely careful. When I went to go out and see this friend of mine they asked me to cancel my date (which had looked forward to that entire week) and go out with them and their family (an idea which really I was 100% sure I did not want) this was the first issue that started getting me thinking they were they a real friend?

A week later they started moaning at me that I haven't spoken to their family in the car as we discuss my plans for moving out. In retrospect this was the reason along with their insistence cancelled my date (which I have to say no to). What really infuriated me over the next two weeks was how they kept asking me if we really were friends. We were mates I would have classed up until two weeks ago this person as a good friend. I was polite and patient bit by bit they infuriated me. Yesterday I found out just how rude they could be. They had invited me a fews days ago to a lunch appointment a workmate they spent almost an hour and a half moaning about a workmate. This in itself would not have killed our friendship it was what they talked about next. Over the entire afternoon I was polite and I listened they said how I was invited to the birthday party in a few weeks (they had in fact invited me two weeks earlier). No the final destruction of our friendship came this morning with a text message. I've only got a limited number of places on the party this summer I think there's been a misunderstanding I smiled to myself. One word in my mind struck me 'Whatever' the word Alex Sten used to use when he was finally fed up with someone. It summed up how I felt and what I was trying to say was it was your decision you can change your mind if you want I don't really care. I'm not sure if a text message me back again and said to me you've come to the party if I would even bother going now. This friend seemed upset when they found out I was in a relationship (in the past). When I had a good job. when I gave one of their friends business card when they asked how they could contact me this friend seemed jealous. When I come to think of it they spent most the time of the last few weeks criticising me I don't need it and I don't want it.

Also its not just me they upset I can think of three of us who won't speck to them as well over things they said! I'm not sure if I'm going to rebuild this friendship but at the moment I really can't be asked...

The changing price of Commodities

A few weeks ago the price of crude oil hit, $139 which is the highest crude oil has ever been. Today the price of is $135 but very soon the price of oil may be due to go up again! In ‘What's Driving the Oil Bull and How Much Further It Will Go?’ on the ‘Money Morning’ website they said the price per a barrel could hit $225 a barrel within next year. I know from my father who used to work from BP oil and Shell that the price of oil is like a yo-yo going up and down. The oil market is decided by the commodities market the result is if you look at any website looking at the price of oil over the last few years it will look something like this:

Oil is the fuel of modern society its price fluctuates if you look at the price of the over the last two years it even more confusing...
As you can see from January 2006 to October 2006 the price was between $65 and $55! Before it went right up!

As my father has always told me it's about supply and demand and today were entering a period where there will always be more demand than supply (source information New York Mercantile Exchange). An organisation which is an exchange commodities like for example crude oil. The result is you have hundreds of people in the room betting on how much of oil will cost and they work out how much we are going to pay (they also ask how much the oil price will change by guessing if their going to be a war causing a shortage of Oil an example is the First Golf war and the Iran/Iraq war of the 1980s). When you look on the New York Mercantile Exchange website http://www.nymex.com the prices are shown in black-and-white the problem is what are the results of these actions? Why and how do the prices affect the world live and work in today.

Well if you ask Saudi Arabia the World’s biggest oil exporter then they’ll give this is the reason why the oil price has gone up. In the business section of the daily telegraph on Monday, June 23, 2008 they talked about this issue on the front page. Later on in this blog there is a map where Oil is found. What most other places have in common like for example Nigeria were local people upset that they don’t have their fair share of the oil revenues attack the pipelines is conflict. It does seem that it only takes a spark that the oil price to leap up, if it does then life over the next decade could become very hard. As I read this article I quickly found out that there is also split in OPEC where Venezuela, Libya, Algeria, Iran and Qatar do not want to see an increase in oil production. First I asked myself is political reasons why these states act the way they do? Maybe the stated reason however is that this is more due to short term speculative investment in the financial markets and knowing how is priced does not surprise me.

I am going to start with why? The first issue I am going to come to is that it is not just oil. Recently in the news it was widely reported that China had obtained a mountain in Peru see http://www.mining-technology.com/news/news5317.html and the BBC website. The reason the Chinese obtained this property is that Mount Tormocho is made up of two billion tonnes of copper ore. This sets the Chinese government back $3 Billion Chinalco (the name of the company buying the mountain through) will be getting the copper ore for $410 per a ton (today London’s metal Exchange is selling the copper for $8,255. China is going to use the copper ore for wiring in its factories.

If you look on the mining technology website and you see dozens of stories about resources. Another example of a report from the same website is entitled ‘Rio Opposes Sharing Oz Railways’ again China crops up they mention that the rival firms because of interest in China and a growing need for iron ore want to use existing lines rather than have to build new ones. You may ask what has this got to do with Oil? Both metals and oils are considered as commodities as I explained before their price fluctuates and it now seems that the world is a race to obtain his resources as quickly as possible.

It’s not just mining in the Guardian’s G2 section on Wednesday the 25th of June 2008 there was an article about ‘Who had stolen all the copper?’. The fact is China’s thirst for resources and so big now that bridges between Germany and the Czech Republic are now being stolen. Church roofs have mysteriously disappeared as they contain copper. In fact the good old Guardian made a list of how much metal objects are worth! Examples are as follows Cast-iron from manhole covers scrap value £210-230 tonne, Lead from a church roof £275 tonne, Copper piping £2,500, Aluminium from Road signs £590-640, Iron from railway bridges £145 to 190 a tonne, Platinum from cars catalytic convertors £30,71 a gramme and Bronze from a ships value is £2,070-2,090. The result is China is acting like a vacuum cleaner sucking up all the resource they are looking for all the commodities. The problem with oil however is not only is the price of oil decided by the commodity markets but also where the actual oil is...
Just in case you think that you're reading the map wrongly you're not! The biggest reserves of oil in the world today are in Saudi Arabia 260 X 10 X9 bbI the country has reserves that should last for another 81 years. Canada which is one of the few stable countries on the list of large oil producers has reserves should last 182 years. The United States and Mexico are both near the bottom there reserves will last just over 10 years so you can see where the problem is and China is not even on the list. I have to say as a scientist and a trainee lawyer with a small amount of knowledge of international politics that most of the countries on the list I would not want to be buying oil from.

Most of the countries on the list are either in the Middle East (for examples Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and Kuwait) all they are run by governments which are despotic example potentially Venezuela or in all but name are despotic like Russia. In the United Kingdom with often talked about the energy infrastructure the example of the recent problems is a clear indication of why we need to change the fuel we use. Just to make my findings clearing here is a table from last year.
Summary of Reserve Data as of 2007
Country Reserves 1 Production 2 Reserve life 3
109 bbl 109 m3 106 bbl/d 103 m3/d years
Saudi Arabia
260 41 8.8 1,400 81
Canada
179 28.5 2.7 430 182
Iran
136 21.6 3.9 620 74
Iraq
115 18.3 3.7 590 101
Kuwait
99 15.7 2.5 400 108
United Arab Emirates
97 15.4 2.5 400 107
Venezuela
80 13 2.4 380 91
Russia
60 9.5 9.5 1,510 17
Libya
41.5 6.60 1.8 290 63
Nigeria
36.2 5.76 2.3 370 43
United States
21 3.3 4.9 780 12
Mexico
12 1.9 3.2 510 10
Notes:
1 Claimed or estimated reserves in billions (109) of barrels (converted to billions of cubic metres). (Source: Oil & Gas Journal, January, 2007)
2 Production rate in millions (106) of barrels per day (converted to thousands of cubic metres per day) (Source: US Energy Information Authority, September, 2007)
3 Reserve life in years, calculated as reserves / annual production. (from above)

Meanwhile in other parts of the world like in South and Maritime Asia businessmen are rapidly turning fast swathes of rainforest into palm oil plantations. A good report to read is ‘Need for cheap palm oil drives deforestation’ By Paul Eccleston in the telegraph newspaper this report written late last year was before the present energy crisis but it shows just how desperate the problem could become. Another example is Athabasca Oil Sands just put those words into Google and you see a huge number of results. I would suggest if you want to know more you could not do worse than look at a two year old article from the BBC website ‘The great Alberta oil rush’ by Peter day. If you read the report explains that all oil needs to do is go above $60 and the oil Sands become worth exploiting well in a world where the average oil prices is $135 I think it is now safe to say that at least someone is making a killing on the commodity markets.

The result of the increase in the price of oil is both causing local and global. Recently I started thinking of moving out a friend recently offered to let him moving with them for a low rent. The reason being the price of living has been going up their gas prices for cooking and heating mean that they need to. On the Goble level the price of oil could destabilise many of the world’s states. One example is Egypt a state that in a few short years could be at war with herself. The BBC have a story called ‘Egypt Islamists' wait for power’ by Yolande Knell, BBC News, Cairoit talks about how Islamic brotherhood is the most popular party in Egyptian politics ( they are technically illegal) there have been waiting for decades to grab power from the ruling NDP. The increase in oil prices is now endangering the Egyptian state the government. One other article also from the BBC ‘Voter turnout low in tense Egypt’ from the 8th of April shows how unstable the country is most Egyptians are earning less than two dollars a day. If the Islamic brotherhood was to gain power in Egypt however the results would be disastrous. The Sinai peninsula is part of Egypt and backs straight on to Israel and Gaza (where due to Israel’s blockade of the territory weapons and oil are now being smuggled in) the result is the Sinai like predicted in the recent Egypt’s Sinai Question Middle East/North Africa, Report N°61, 30 January 2007 by the International by the renowned think tank Crisis Group . The result is that what in the developed world hard to control increases in the cost of living could cause international disasters in the developing world.
By Ian Rosmarin 24/5/2008

Today we live in a world where at the touched of a button you can get revenge...

How easy it is with technology, in Afghanistan with a touch of another button they can blow up a helicopter.

In the film Lord of War which I watched a few days ago they talked about child soldiers. I come from a scientific background (even though I'm studying to do law). I hope the weapons designers of the future do not develop weapons that can be used by children. What with the knife crime in London you do not need a civil war in the country the children to kill each other.

The one disturbing point however of the film was the idea that an arms trader could be protected by his own government. However what we have seen with the Iraq war with hundreds if not thousands of private contractors is anything to go by it is a growth industry. Would the shortages of the necessities like oil and water I can see it becoming an even greater industry. Oh brave new world hail the new revolution the .com arms trader.

Today I saw a film with Will Smith which was actually very good. It was called Hancock it was about a superhero with problems. Unlike other superhero films I've seen the main character was deeply uneasy about himself. He had problems with alcohol and often children would see him with very few clothes on. Hancock was truly not your average superhero he spent much of his time sleeping on park benches and when there was an emergency he needed to be woken up. Added to that most people did not even really like him. The result was deeply flawed superhero in many ways he was almost an anti-hero.

Then Hancock saves the life of a PR man and on the advice of the PR man he agrees to go to prison for all the criminal damage to Hancock has done. In one scene he throws a basketball be on the perimeter fence he flies out of the prison just to get the ball but causes an alert then goes back.

It later on transpires one of the main character's problems is that he does not even know who he is. Sure enough later on he finds out but us the audience this is unfortunately never fully explained all I will say is that he's not the only one of he's kind and his immortal and guessing at this point that there will be a sequel and I'm fairly sure that there are more than just two of them...

yours Ian Rosmarin

I had sex with a friend on Sunday...

I'm not saying who they are just was the first time I had made love to a friend not a girlfriend.

Only an hour ago I talked to a female mate from law school we found ourselves talking about the subject. They were surprised that I had never had sex with someone who was not my girlfriend at the time. When I look at my life I realise that really my view of the world is not a 1990s view or even a 1980s view but often a 1950s view maybe even a 1920s. Sex for both men and women has changed an awful lot since early last century.

Or has it changed at all...

Queen Victoria once said that the upper classes understood sex and the lower classes just had sex the problem with the middle-class was that they got hot under the collar about sex. The result has been that sex happened before marriage however it was hidden. My personal thought has been that our present attitudes towards sex have been around since world War two when people did not know if they would be a alive the next day never mind the next year. As time has gone by attitudes towards sex of relaxed more apart from sexually transmitted diseases like for example HIV.

And on that note I finished this posting of my blog...

Life...
The last three or so weeks I have been working for a printing company called FC Print. I've been trying to do their sales in Potters bar but yesterday was the most eventful day so far. It started off by me going down the high Street in Potters bar (actually we've got two high Streets in Potters bar but that's another story). I went into each shop that was not a chain, chains always print their own cards apparently. Till I reached this industrial estate on the far side of town.

It did not look much a few old buildings some with rusty roofs most made out of steel. Its a hilly area of town concrete streets where if you fell you could injure yourself badly. Most British businesses like these have fewer than 20 people working for them. There are estimated to be over 43 million British businesses most of them based at home or in industrial estates like this one. Most of the boss’s are old man or women who know the industry like the back of their hand this is the UK today. Other people working knowledge industry or the financial services as a credit crunch has demonstrated these industries are more susceptible to recession. Napoleon called Britain a country of shopkeepers today I would not call Britain a country of shopkeepers but a nation of entrepreneurs. Most of the buildings actually look like glorified warehouses in the air you could smell a mixture of oil and wood chip. It was what they actually did say in the industrial estate that interested me as I gave out each one of my business cards. I'm not going name the companies my last entry in this blog almost got me into trouble for naming people.

They tended to fix cars one sold spares for minis and the other was repairing vintage cars another was repairing racing cars. One of the small companies are walked into I went to see the boss and he had a mean black violent dog. My uncle has a company in Sheffield that make mouth guards all these firms reminded me of them. I don't think today were in a post-industrial Britain it's just our industry has scaled down and when you want to see industrial Britain life you have to go to the industrial estate at the small businesses. Maybe we don’t have mines, ships yards or car factories but we still have industry.

Ian Rosmarin

The last three or so weeks I have been working for a printing company called FC Print. I've been trying to do their sales in Potters bar but yesterday was the most eventful day so far. It started off by me going down the high Street in Potters bar (actually we've got two high Streets in Potters bar but that's another story). I went into each shop that was not a chain, chains always print their own cards apparently. Till I reached this industrial estate on the far side of town.

It did not look much a few old buildings some with rusty roofs most made out of steel. Most buildings actually look like glorified warehouses in the air you could smell a mixture of oil and wood chip. It was what they actually did say in the industrial estate that interested me as I gave out each one of my business cards. I'm not going name the companies my last entry in this blog almost got me into trouble for naming people.

They tended to fix cars one sold spares for minis and the other was repairing vintage cars another was repairing racing cars. One of the small companies are walked into I went to see the boss and he had a mean black violent dog. My uncle has a company in Sheffield that make mouth guards all these firms reminded me of them. I don't think today were in a post-industrial Britain it's just our industry has scaled down and when you want to see industrial Britain life you have to go to the industrial estate at the small businesses.

Ian Rosmarin