Flying Aqua Badger

Copenhagen Climate Change Conference

2009-11-06T11:54:00.002Z

All year this event has been given the big billing. This is going when the authorities of the world are going to get together and decide what to do about the human pollution impact on the planet. I hope I'm not read as too cynical in my belief that nothing of the sort is going to happen.

Why is that?

Lets see who is attending and the views.

Amongst others: China, USA, EU, India, Japan, African Union, Gulf states, Small Island Alliance

No wish to commit on targets
We'll cut if you cut
Rich countries cut your emissions by 40% by 2020
Rich countries pay developing world to adapt
Rich countries provide low carbon technology
BRIC nations to commit on slower growth of emissions
Rich nations to cut emissions by 80%-95% by 2050
Financial aid to oil producers if agreement requires cut of fossil fuels

So much to reconcile and so much vested interest. There is a huge reluctance to commit to targets and make it a legal obligation. The 80% cut by 2050 (on 1990 levels) for rich nations gets the most agreement even amongst the rich nations, USA and the EU. However there are two very good reasons for that.
1: It's years and years away where not only is there a good chance that the people signing up to it will not be serving in office at the time, but it's also likely they'll be dead
2: We'll have burned near all of our oil, gas and coal so the carbon emissions will fall off a cliff because we have no further means of producing them

It won't be for lacking of trying. We're just not grown up and trusting of each other enough yet.

Afghanistan - Here for a long time

2009-11-05T12:03:00.003Z

The government line still sticks with supporting a corrupt leader in Hamid Karsai to end corruption in the Afghan police and army so that the nation becomes stable and doesn't allow the Taliban back in. After this is done, are troops can be pulled out and Afghanistan can be left to its own devices.

I hope you don't need me to point out the logical problem with that plan of action. Democracy doesn't exist where only one candidate stands for election. But, considering that's how we got our very own leader, it shouldn't be too surprising that this is how we recognise it as a democracy.

It took 8 years for WWII to begin (counting the Japan-China war as the start) and end. Of the 3 objectives for the Afghan war, none have really been met:
Over 8 years have passed since troops stormed Afghanistan and Osama Bin Laden still evades capture. Saddam Hussain was captured in the same year as war was declared on Iraq in 2003.
Al-Qaeda is still claiming atrosities.
The Taliban are camped out in the Pakistani hills waiting for the coalition forces to go home.

We need a new strategy if we are to leave anytime soon.

Prime Minister's Questions - 04/11/2009

2009-11-04T12:01:00.002Z

12:01 - More fallen in Afghanistan. This time to a police turncoat, undermining the strategy in the war.

Good on the Speaker; Stopping Gordon Brown from going off topic on the NHS trying to refer to an comment from the shadow health secretary.

12:06 - Very subdued opening brace of questions from the leader of the opposition, David Cameron. Playing into the Prime Minister's hands at the moment.

12:10 - Finally moving to MP's expenses. Cameron is trying to get the PM to agree to the Kelly report. The PM agrees at the end of a long response.

12:11 - David Blunkett with a loaded question on the Tory situation with the Lisbon treaty. The speaker again doing a good job in directing the Prime Minister in his response.

12:12 - Nick Clegg is attempting to speak and getting heckled by the childish bullies in the House. Looking for a timetable for the Afghan cabinet clean-up. Sadly he's looking for a specific answer which the Prime Minister would never give even if he did have an answer.

12:16 - A Labour backbencher asking for a exit strategy/timetable. More bla bla bla as a response.

12:16 - A transport question. No real response again.

12:18 - NHS spending question. Again, nothing much in a answer.

12:19 - Helpful question on tax credits. PM response entirely geared towards keeping promises. Boom and bust anyone?

12:20 - Youth Parliament. Vote at 16 question from Labour backbencher. A direct response. The PM favours giving the vote to 16 year olds.

12:23 - Afghan serious injury figures question. No commitment.

12:24 - Helpful question on the car scrapage scheme.

12:25 - NIMROD crash compensation question. The PM resolves to deal with it.

12:27 - Question on rotting submarines. Dodges the question.

12:28 - Question on cutting nurseries. Another entirely unrelated jibe at the Tory Lisbon position.

12:29 - Question on the faithfulness of the Afghan police and army. Party line response.

12:30 - The Professor Nutt question. An orderly response.

Show's over. An easy ride for the PM. His strategy of making life easy on himself by bringing up the dead at the beginning of every session is working perfectly.

Breaking up the Banks

2009-11-01T21:11:00.003Z

Over the weekend, news has broken that Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling wants to break up the banks which the government owns a significant stake in. This is to increase competition.

"What I want to do now is begin the process of reform and reconstruction so we have got a safer, more competitive banking system with more high street banks than we have at the moment, with new entrants coming in"

New entrants? From what I've read, whatever is broken up is going to be sold on. Virgin Money, Tesco Finance and Santander amongst the names. No new entrants there. Before the banks all got eaten up into the larger entities, the profits were huge. Huge profits in a mature market means something is very wrong. Going back to the competition levels of 10 years ago may help a little, but it is a hardly going to make the banking system robust.

To make the banking system safer we need to address the now cliched "too big to fail" problem. Only a radical breaking up of the banks will help competition do its thing and control risk and pricing. More successful routes will be getting to grips with the fractal reserve system itself (which forces perpetual and ever increasing debt the more is paid in) and limiting areas for wide scale speculation, specifically in land.

Story: BBC, Reuters

Government Drug Advisor Cannabis Row

2009-11-01T20:32:00.004Z

If you have an opinion on anything. It can be politicised. When the opinion of yours, solicited by the government, is on drugs it be nothing but politicised. I would be horrified if the various advisory groups supporting the numerous government departments didn't bark when their advice was ignored by their minister.

Professor David Nutt was absolutely right to call the decision a whim. It clearly isn't based on science. Nicotine and alcohol being more dangerous substances? You won't catch me arguing against that. We all know that if those two drugs were discovered now they would be illegal.

It would take a brave government to make that happen. Naturally, because we haven't got one, cannabis gets a rawer deal. That said, I'm struggling to find the point of the classification system for drugs. If the issue we reclassification is that down grading a drug sends out the message that it's ok then the system is always onto a loser. Unless of course the figures must be revised upwards. Should a Class A+ come into being then you know what's going on...

Story links: BBC, Reuters

"Learn to Tolerate Inequality" We're Told

2009-10-22T18:49:00.003+01:00

Lord Griffiths of Fforestfach is vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs International and a former adviser to Lady Thatcher during her spell in office.

He is quoted in the Times with this:

Lord Griffiths said the general public should “tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity for all”, saying also that “we should not ... be ashamed of offering compensation in an internationally competitive market which ensures the bank businesses here and employs British people”.

An interesting argument. I'm not against inequality. There are people that are many times more useful to society than I am so why shouldn't they get paid many times more than I do? The support stops when we get to unearned inequality.

That's what we have in the finance sector at the moment. Any other sector wouldn't be able to hold us to ransom the way the bankers are. Why is it possible for them? They have the access of course. Thanks to the fractal reserve system they can make money without labour and pay themselves handsomely with it.

“tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity for all”
That's a statement of conquest that is. Rather than the hundreds that make up the bankers forego their unearned bonus, the millions that make up the public are told to put up with it. Far easier and noble would be the former than the latter.

Taxpayer's Alliance on Road Pricing

2009-10-15T22:01:00.003+01:00

I have to confess, I struggled to see the point of an article titled Road pricing blather from Boris on the Taxpayer's alliance blog "Economics 101".

The statement “There is absolutely no scheme in the Mayor’s Transport Strategy to introduce road user charging in London.” followed by an anti road user charging commentary diminishes the whole thing. Weird. I had to comment.

The British do themselves a lot of self harm by our generalised obsession with home ownership, car ownership and apathy towards politics. If I haven't said that succinctly before it's worth saying now.

The car ownership argument is probably the harder one to sell. I think of it this way: when 50 years are up and all the oil is gone (with the exception of personal hoards kept by the very rich most likely) we will look back and think "What on earth were we doing allowing petrol to be purchased so cheaply and then burnt up travelling 100 yards to the top of the road."

With the exponential growth and demand for oil from the rapidly growing economies I think I'm being generous saying as much as 50 years. I think it'll be much shorter than that but I've put out a figure you may be able to get on board with. The dangerous figures that keep floating about are numbers like 250 years or 800 years. They are a nonsense based on the arithmetic of exponential consumption and ever decreasing discoveries of new supplies.

Selling Assets in the Deflated Market

2009-10-14T00:13:00.003+01:00

This weeks re-announcement of the sale of government assets originally announced in the 2009 Budget by Alistair Darling has received a rather poor response from the media and blogs. The reason for this is that this government has a track record of not getting the best deal and selling at the trough.
They've confirmed themselves that this isn't a good idea by scrapping plans to part privatise the Royal Mail on grounds that market conditions are poor back in July.

I'm of mixed mind on this. Criticising the government for selling low and not getting the best value for the taxpayer is easy. Counter to that is the willing selling of assets at the price they are worth now on a large scale will perform the write down of assets so desperately needed to bring us back reality.

Mitch Benn rounded up the situation best:

So now we've had a good look and realised where we're supposed to be. The only thing stopping us getting down there and building a proper platform to stand at this level of prosperity is the fact that there are still a huge number of people flailing around in mid air, Wild E Coyote style, thinking that they can still stay provided they ignore the laws of financial gravity long enough for someone else to build the platform.

So in this case if the government is going to sell I hope it starts a trend.

Expenses Are Back and Better Than Ever

2009-10-13T22:51:00.003+01:00

The big break was back in May when the Daily Telegraph started published details of leaked documents from the Fees Office. After years of digging their heels in, Parliament finally gave way and published farcical redacted documents a few weeks later. The difference between the two sets of documents proved that the Parliament produced record omitted details that would reveal the second home flipping.

Elliot Morley became arguably the first person on the planet to forget he paid off his mortgage. Oddly inconsistent are the dates if I have these correct. The mortgage was paid off in 2006 and claims were made 18 months subsequently. At the latest that makes the claims stop in June 2008. It was nearly a year later before he repaid the money.

Did he stop claiming because he thought he'd paid off his mortgage in 2008 or (much, much more likely) did he stop claiming but didn't feel he needed to pay overpayments to him back, only realising he did because the press got hold of it? If there is a case to be pressed for prosecution on fraud grounds, this is the one to watch. Morley has been out of the news since he decided to step down at the next election in late May.

Deciding to step down at the next election is the answer of choice for scores of MPs. Very few wish to force by-elections (Ian Gibson of the Labour Party did and votes for the party slumped by over a quarter passing the seat over to the Conservative Party) and there is some nice cushy parachute payments for serving the full term in the House of Commons. Speaks volumes. Good on Ian Gibson for doing the right thing when stepping down in such a scandal, which is to step down immediately.

What's new is the story is that the independent auditor has used his own set of arbitrary rules to determine what he believes MPs should pay back. What he deems as sensible limits that weren't explicit for cleaning and gardening for example. Retrospective rules are an ugly business. Is it really fair for the politicians to be charged for abusing rules to didn't exist at the time?

The MPs are an angry bunch at the moment, off the record. None are being stupid enough to say anything in anger on camera sadly. So now both the public and parliament are in equal moods, both feeling unfairly treated. The angry MPs still appear to be missing the point though. Allowances, as written, didn't specify upper limits where all good sense say they should have. Quite frankly, I don't understand how a garden is wholly necessary for a MP to perform his/her duty so a £1000 limit is very generous. The same goes for a cleaner and £2000.

Where Sir Thomas Legg proposes that they should pay back any money claimed and received over this amount they should bite the bullet and accept that this is punitive measure that is an indictment on their judgement. Their acceptance of this will prove that they understand the feelings of the electorate. If they can't make that sacrifice to prove their worth then that only goes to show they were only ever in it for the money. Serving comes second.

Labour Conference - Gordon Brown Speech

2009-10-03T18:34:00.002+01:00

Just back from my holiday in the glorious South West of England and playing catch up on the Labour conference. So I'll just share the notes I made whilst watching the Party Leader's speech:

Sickly opening by wife. Nothing in there that I or anyone else couldn't do. No reason why he is best to run the country.

Good praising on Labour achievements in the past 12 years.

Sickly praising of Harman and Mandy. Slightly more respectful praising of Darling. The face on Balls, who wanted the chancellor job going into the summer was priceless.

Statement saying we have 2 choices. That's not democracy and if it is, it's shit.

Back to the easy habit of Tory bashing. Yawn.

The whole theme of the speech seems to be that he doesn't understand that he has bought 2009 and hopefully 2010. The price is every year that follows. Any government could chose to do that. That's not the hard choice, that's the short term choice.

"What failed was the conservative idea that markets always self correct." If that's the case then there has to be the failure of the left wing idea that markets don't work unaided and that in 10 years they couldn't pick this up.

Claiming credit for the NHS. As a party yes. Unless I'm missing a trick he wasn't born at the time of it's creation...

"The banks will pay back the British people". Not likely.

Next election: 1st term of a new global age. Green ecomony, finance as the service not the master, bring all the talents of the country to bear.

250,000 new green British jobs. Lets see how that one will work.

"Will invest more in schools". The money for that is coming where?

"Started recession with the 2nd lowest debt in G7 economies" Reduce debt by 50% in 4 years. Raise tax at the top, cut costs and make savings for front line services.

Inheritence tax again. Little to do with Labour apart from them starting the practice... weird thing to mention.

Minimum wage. One of Labour's good points.
Ooh, next the welfare system. More uncosted increases.

Children having children. 16 and 17 year old parents to get supervised homes. Interesting idea.

50,000 most chaotic families to go on family intervention program. What a chart that is.

When talking about the service level agreements for policing I couldn't help but notice the conferences slow pick up of applause when 48 hours was the closing remark. Sounded like they expected 24.

Terrorism and immigration in the same sentence. Bad idea. That's BNP talk.

No compulsory ID cards. Only took a few years and a shed load of wasted money to work that one out.

Constituents right to recall their MP for wrongdoing. Good move.
Referendum for the alternative vote system. Also good.
House of Lords again. Good, but is it believeable.

More Tory bashing. Yawn.

Paying respect to dead soliders in Afganistan. Basically buying a standing ovation.

Long waffle on NHS with presumably rare personal letters from individuals positively affected by changes made by New Labour. Hate these kind of things. One side of a highly complex story.

The footy results coming in are taking my attention as the waffle continues.

Labour embracing hope. Hah! Too bloody right you do.

Beating cancer in this generation seems to be a big thing in this speech. How's that going to work?

Labour Conference - Mandy on Brown

2009-10-03T18:22:00.004+01:00

The problem is we, the public, don't know him.
"He's hard working, determined, conscientious, doesn't take no for an answer"

Apart from the fact the last attribute can be relabelled as 'bloody minded' this doesn't describe a unique personality yet alone whether that's all the criteria necessary and valued in a Prime Minister.

Where Lord Mandelson has more of a point is that we no longer listen to Gordon Brown. He will forever be haunted by "no more boom and bust", "not only have we saved the world" and "I take full responsibility, that's why I fired the man responsible".

Sure there are some things that can be forgiven. The change of heart on parking charges in hospital car parks for example. If you change your mind on that year to year you aren't going to find me giving much of a monkey.

When you've the steward of the whole economy, miss the forthcoming abyss and then shout and scream about how you should be praised for only seeing us to the edge and not falling yet, then you're not going to get off so easy.

The Woolas

2009-09-22T23:06:00.003+01:00

Phil Woolas, the Immigration Secretary, is an interesting minister to keep an eye on. This is purely for the way Joanna Lumley ripped him apart on the Gurkhas issue earlier in the year. It's hard to take him seriously after that.

However, it is shocking to see on Newsnight that Dominic Grieve, his Conservative counterpart, couldn't deliver a knock out blow on the debate over Baroness Scotland. As I breezed over in my last post, it's a no-brainer. Ministerial Code - "must comply with the law". If you get fined by our justice system guess what haven't done...

Better debating skills needed Mr Grieve

It Seems Rules are There to be Broken

2009-09-22T18:33:00.003+01:00

Following on from the expenses saga that so far has left no-one facing charges and has lacked any real consequence thus far for the MPs involved we have now moved to a time where the political elite can make laws and break them with no real consequence either.

We cannot have law makers who create rules and break them existing law. That is simple enough as it stands. But to break a law that you helped create yourself and still expect the power to create more is absolutely unthinkable. There is no possible defence for Baroness Scotland. She created an ill advised law that business was decidedly against because establishing the legitimacy of a potential employee's right to work is red-tape-tastic. She fell short of it, thus proving not only its unworkable nature but also that she isn't to be trusted making law.

The Oncoming Oil Crisis Gets Breezed Over Again

2009-09-22T08:19:00.002+01:00

There were two stories on oil yesterday that entirely contradict each other. One where the Total boss Christophe de Margerie warns that we (whoever that is) are under-investing in tapping reserves. The other where oil prices have fallen by near $3 due to lack of demand.

The fact that these stories come about on the same day illustrates the short term thinking that historians in 50 years time are going to regard as madness. Selfish self interest makes the discoverers of oil fields think that their finds are their exclusive property to sell on and make themselves ridiculously wealthy ignoring the millions of years it took to form.

They genuinely don't seem to care when it runs out, just so long as they get the right price now.

"Finders, keepers" is supposed to an expression found in children. I guess not.

Conference Season - Lib Dems - Part 2

2009-09-21T18:39:00.003+01:00

Vince Cable has finally come out with something mildly resembling a land value tax. It is being worded as a property tax in the media but so far as I'm aware the details are fuzzy. As the BBC puts it, we don't know whether the figures to determine the value of property will be from Land Registry figures, house sale prices or a valuation carried out by the local authority.

It's a start and a policy in the right direction. Taxing the value of property on an annual levy of 0.5% where it is worth over £1m. Personally, I don't think it stretches down low enough. I hate the introduction of artificial barriers. Speculation, and especially housing speculation, forms the heart of economic crisis' and we must bring about disincentives that limit it.

This week on Answer the Question - Yvette Cooper

2009-09-20T20:39:00.003+01:00

A nice little gem from Wednesday when Mrs Cooper shirked a question from an exasperated journalist (who seemingly had asked the same question a number of times).

This was when leaked figures from the treasury suggested that they have been working to a plan of 9.3% cuts once the election was bagged. All the while calling David Cameron "Mr 10%" and waffling about Labour investment vs Tory Cuts.

It's about 2 minutes into the video.

Source: BBC

Conference Season - Lib Dems - Part 1

2009-09-20T19:21:00.003+01:00

The controversy has begun. On the backdrop of education secretary Ed Balls saying he can save £2bn in his budget without affecting the quality of learning (which implicitly states that he's been wasting money) , the Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg has shaken the foundations of their flagship policy of scrapping tuition fees. This is naturally under the grounds that it'll cost too much in the current economic climate and it should be postponed.

I don't think it's the right line to take. The problem with party politics is that the leading parties all look far too alike. The Lib Dems need clear dividing lines and has to defend them strongly. If a flagship policy doesn't stand up to recession then they have to be very clear when they are talking about "nice-to-haves".

Personally, I'm not a big fan of scrapping tuition fees. The government wish to have a high level of univeristy attendance and that sucks up a lot of capital. Having 50% of the 18-21 year olds taking out of labour pool is a substantial finance burden and it needs consideration as to where those funds will come from. A low interest loan which waits for you to be bringing in a decent sized salarly before repayments begin is possibly one of the fairest ways divisable.

The Things You Hear a Labour Advisor Say

2009-09-15T21:29:00.002+01:00

Lord Mandelson leads the Labour Party. Sorry, that full stop came a bit early. Lets try again. Lord Mandelson leads the Labour Party into a new row with the Tories: Reluctant Labour Cuts vs Savage Tory Cuts.

There's a large dollop of truth in that line of thought. The Conservatives believe in a small state and because most of the civil servants the state employ are Labour core they have no problem making that number smaller. Labour on the other hand want the public sector big and protected to secure their core vote.

Go back three months and the line was "Labour investment vs Tory Cuts". This was Gordon Browns line and this change only shows him up as being either weak, stupid or both by having to be told by Alistair Darling and Mandelson that this phrase was never going to wash.

Also at the event where the Business Secrectary was speaking was a former advisor to Hazel Blears. Judging by the angle he was approaching the next election at he was probably the one that told Hazel that flashing a cheque in front of the TV camara was a good idea.

His view was that time has passed on so much that we may have forgotten or not lived through how bad and nasties the Conservatives were when they were in power and we'd be making a mistake to vote them in again on that basis. If only his memory was a little longer, stretching back to the 70's. With the same arguement applied, there's no way Labour would have been voted back into government in '97 if memory of their previous occupation was strong.

Very few will be voting Conservative because they think they'll be great or even good. Most will be voting to give Labour and Gordon Brown a well deserved, brutal and public punishment beating.

Brown Watch 15/09/2009

2009-09-15T20:47:00.003+01:00

I think I say this every week that I don't want to run down Gordon Brown each time I feel like writing a blog post but he just has this way of saying things that set me off.

His interview with bank-run horn blower/Business Editor of the BBC Robert Peston yesterday:

Peston: It turned out that our banking system here in the UK was one of the two weakest in the world. The other banking system that was in as much difficulty was the American banking system. Do you have no personal regret about failing to spot that?

Brown: No, I've been very clear. We should all have been supervising more.

You what? He has no regrets about not spotting the weakness of the UK banking system yet in the same paragraph says they should have been supervising more. The man that bought us and demanded "light touch" regulation knows it was a mistake but doesn't regret it.

Then he goes on about saying that we have learnt the lessons this crisis should teach us and that he wants to teach the rest of the world. All the while that sickly smile of his comes about as finishes the sentence that takes the scene away from the domestic to his more comfortable turf of the international.

Furthermore. He refuses to talk timing of these inevitable oncoming cuts in public spending. This time he's hiding behind France, Germany and the USA. Happy to lead when it comes to spending money, desperate to follow when it comes to saving it. For a man that has "saved the world" he don't half find it hard to just plain save.

The implied logic of that is he is not sorry about leading us into this mess. Reassuring that. Best let him get back to poisoning the well...

Housing and the False Dawn

2009-09-15T19:41:00.002+01:00

Thankfully there is at least Ernst & Young telling us not to read too much into the current housing statistics which the media is giving the rose tint treatment.

Things are looking up we hear. Monthly increases of 1% or so. The cash rich are buying and the few are selling. Not much of a surprise that the mild house price flop has evened out briefly. Loss aversion is rampant and there is little downside. The answer to affording the mortgage on an overpriced house is to lower the interest rate. Why move and lose money when you can stay on with the repayments maybe £100 or more less than what they were this time last year?

Eventually something is going to have to give. Interest rates can't stay low forever. Ever increasing borrowers in arrears can't be shielded from the lender's dogs indefinitely. The axe continues to fall as companies repair their over-extended balance sheets.

I'm not meaning to paint a picture of doom and gloom. It doesn't have to be that way. Just saying we've got to get real some day. With the UK average salary at £33k that would put the necessary average house price at roughly £140k (3.5 x salary + comfortable 20% deposit). We're not there by a long shot with average house price still lurking about the £200k mark.

Headline, until the housing market drops somewhere in the order of 30% we're a long way off sane housing prices.

Recovery - Or Something Like It

2009-09-13T19:48:00.003+01:00

Today was the first time I saw anything of 4 million as a headline feared jobless number as a prediction for the how extensive this recession could be. This came from Brendan Barber, the TUC leader.

Whilst there are recently published figures indicating we are leaving technical recession there is still consensus that unemployment is going to continue rising for some time to come. At the moment those numbers are coming from the private sector as the government "stimulus" and dedication to spending money that doesn't exist on the public sector continues.

Spending is going to have to ease off sooner or later. Redundancies aren't the intention but they will be coming. The "stimulus" is also based off outdated figures. When the treasury was expected to make a loss in July of £500m the loss turned out to be £8bn. We can't afford to be 16 times worse off for long. That would turn Darling's £175bn annual deficit into £2.8tn. Whilst I don't expect things to get that bad, the more figures like that show up, the quicker the "stimulus" will peter out.

Whilst keeping employment high remains a keen objective of any government worried about falling tax receipts, keeping a balanced balance sheet is more important.

Silly Season

2009-09-13T11:44:00.002+01:00

The media talk of August as the silly season. Which is somewhat contrary to what happens today when the political programming resumes for the autumn.

Already I've heard Alan Johnson talk of Gordon Brown as having no faults that need fixing (despite the Prime Minister's own confession to the trade union bosses that he does) and John Denham saying that we should trust labour to get the balance right when it comes to the UK PLC books when they are probably doing enough with "bringing spending forward" to do Enron proud.

Welcome back "sane" season.

Equality in Politics

2009-07-12T22:14:00.002+01:00

Gender, race, religion... all the diversity and equality arguments over representative cabinets would go away if the cabinet was any good.

Ah, I see why they're all kicking off again.

Vain Indications of Recovery

2009-07-12T15:54:00.003+01:00

You know you're looking at a headline desperate for positive signs in the economy when it reads: "Number of profit warnings 'fall'". Since it is the lowest figure since Q2 2003 it doesn't really give much away in itself apart from expectations are more realistic than they have been for six years.

After a year of economic correction, company profit projections finally have license to be closer the mark unlike boom-time where if you're not hitting stupidly high levels then the market cripples your share price.

What would be great is if we did move to more conservative estimates where so greed doesn't force us down the wrong alley again. Wishful thinking isn't the word.

A Load of Balls

2009-07-01T00:46:00.002+01:00

Just in case I need to remind myself why a person like Ed Balls should be kept as far away from power as possible:

Outright lies

Disinviting [sic] the local MP from a school