Hello again, and as temperatures once again climb in exactly the same way that Scottish football hopes don’t, it’s almost time for me and pretty much all other Scots with school age kids to head for the hills. We might not be great at remembering not to aimlessly kick a ball around in front of our own goal when Vini Jr is hooning down on us at a rate of knots, but we do get to go on cheap summer holidays. So there’s that. 

Thank you to those of you who checked in with me after last week’s Update; it means a lot. And to those who said well done on us winning PR agency of the year too. Did I mention that?  

Quite hard to get excited about much in our corner of financial services when we have the excitement of various forms of sport to worry about, and by sport I include politics and the incoming coronation of The Holy Burnham.  

This isn’t a politics newsletter, but it’s worth dwelling on the sheer speed with which our existing Prime Minister has been defenestrated. Here is a list of the last 10 Prime Ministers along with what age I was when they took office. This is a fun game, particularly if you’re a bit younger. 

We’ve been through six in the same time as the first one on the list. I wonder if the Holy Andy will last any longer.  

So my question is: are we more fickle now, or is the nature of the world we live in so different from not-so-long-ago times? Is it the 24-news cycle, and social meejah and all that, or are we more bloodthirsty? Do we kill our gods and kings for sport now? 

Now I know what you’re all shouting at your screen right now: “For God’s sake Mark, just quote The Golden Bough by Sir James Frazer and be done with it! A leading late nineteenth century canonical text on mythology will put this to bed once and for all!” And of course you’re right, and the chapter we want is chapter 24, “The Killing of the Divine King”. 

“Now primitive peoples…sometimes believe that their safety and even that of the world is bound up with the life of one of these god-men…Naturally, therefore, they take the utmost care of his life, out of a regard for their own. But no amount of care and precaution will prevent the man-god from growing old and feeble and at last dying…There is only one way of averting these dangers. The man-god must be killed as soon as he shows symptoms that his powers are beginning to fail, and his soul must be transferred to a vigorous successor before it has been seriously impaired by the threatened decay.” 

I’m just saying that we’ve been at this a long time. And while our political leaders get to go on a book tour, Frazer writes about the Chitome people of the Congo, where the successor had to club or choke the incumbent to death. So we’ve come at least a bit of a way. 

What does this have to do with financial services? Not very much to be honest, but I’ll have a go and you’ll just have to put up with it. Someone with a vested interest pointed out this interesting piece from John Glen MP on the increasingly intolerable Linkedin, thus proving that even among the utter bilge that supposed thought leaders in our sector vomit up via the medium of Claude or ChatGPT because they’re far too busy in other onanistic pursuits to, you know, write something there are still a few gems. 

The long and the short of it is that Glen is calling for equivalent disclosure of cash interest retention along with platform and other charges. I think that’s about right, and (checks notes) I wrote roughly the same thing back in March, but hey ho. I’m not – and this may shock some of you – a Conservative MP. 

At the same time we have the FCA popping up and saying that cash interest retention must be Consumer Duty compliant, which is weird because I thought everything had to be Consumer Duty compliant all the time, but I guess not. Anyway, the bit you want is page 27 of this.  

This is the hot button issue de nos jours, and lots of people are very excited about it one way or the other. They’re right to be; regulation hasn’t caught up with market practice and there is a two-speed system for disclosure which really does want bringing into line. That’s fine; everyone can charge whatever they like pretty much however they like as long as they’re up front about it. Yay late-stage regulated capitalism! 

I guess the link back to Jimmy F and his Golden Bough is that we don’t just impute people with extraordinary potence; we do the same for issues. Before interest it was transfers. Before that it was superclean share classes. There were probably some others. We’re as fickle at this as we are at anything else. 

I don’t know what’s got me thinking this way, but our fickle focus is at odds with the long-term impact and even permanence of what we push at. We rail at something, we move on and oftentimes things aren’t done right, or at all, before we’re onto the next.  

It’s quote week for some reason, so here’s a last one before I head off for my first holiday in quite a long time. Anyone who guessed that it would be Quatrain 51 from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam as translated by Edward Fitzgerald in 1859 wins £10. Our attention is fickle; consequences aren’t. 

“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.” 

Your music choice this week goes out to someone close who lost someone yesterday, and maybe to you too if that’s true of you, and for everyone else this is just an incredible piece of music. Here’s The Parting Glass performed by The Pogues at Shane McGowan’s funeral. 

I’m away throughout July, hoping that sun and wine are the answers to getting rid of arthritis flares, but if they’re not then at least I’ve had sun and wine. Divers Cats will Update you over the coming weeks. Be good.  

Mark