Breaking news: Gordon Brown about to call election in next couple of months

Or something like that.

Word of the day: thitherto

Yes, it’s a real word. And it means exactly what logic would suggest it does.

I was just editing an article that mentioned a book someone published in the 1970s, and it said that the author “had hitherto been regarded as an expert”. Clearly wrong, given the tense, but I didn’t know what was right. It struck me that “thitherto” would be ideal, but surely that couldn’t be a real word! I was about to rephrase the whole thing when I decided I might as well look it up, just on the offchance.

Moral of the story: follow your instincts.

(Next week: the tragic tale of the incompetent seductress who went around sporting a go-thither look.)

Brown’s gold standard

Here is a wonderful graph created by Giles Wilkes:


It shows that Gordon Brown’s decision to sell a lot of the UK gold reserves in 1999 (when the price was low) has left the Treasury about $10 billion worse off. Oh, and that Geoffrey Howe’s decision not to sell gold in 1979 (when the price was high) has left us about $35bn worse off.

Giles explains it all here.

‘I have never hit anybody. And I’m not a crook.’

Krishnan Guru-Murthy’s interview with Gordon Brown was hit and miss. Literally.

I was astonished when I watched this part of it:

KGM: Have you ever hit anyone?
GB: I have never hit anybody in my life.
KGM: You know this is all what's being said…
GB: Let me just say absolutely clearly, so that there is no misunderstanding about that, I have never, never hit anybody in my life.
KGM: Or shoved them?
GB: No, I don't do these sorts of things.

It’s extraordinary for a Prime Minister to be in the position of making such a denial. But not completely without precedent. Watching it, my mind was cast back to 17 November 1973:

In all of my years of public life, I have never obstructed justice. And I think, too, that I can say that in my years of public life that I welcome this kind of examination, because people have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook. I've earned everything I've got.

I don’t know how Nixon’s denial was seen at the time, but in retrospect it has become one of the defining moments in his disgrace.

Is Brown’s “never hit anybody in my life” in the same ball park?

Probably not. Guru-Murthy may have inadvertently done Brown a huge favour in asking too strong a question. Andrew Rawnsley’s book doesn’t contain any allegations that Brown “hit” anybody. The nearest is that Brown “roughly shoved” someone aside. While hitting is unambiguous – either you wholly deliberately strike someone with your hand or no such thing happens – what a “rough shove” amounts to is unclear both physically and in terms of intention.

But by airing the notion of Brown’s having hit sometime, Guru-Murthy has drawn attention away from the actual allegations and also made them seem less serious by contrast (Brown also denied any shoving, but that’s barely been noticed).

NB I generally respect Rawnsley’s work, and while his explanation of how he decided whether things he was told were “utterly reliable accounts… from impeccable sources” or not is basically empty, I can quite believe that Brown has a nasty temper on him and that he can be terrible to work for.

"A future fair for all"

...being Labour's new election slogan - not quite as turgid as it could have been. The trouble is that it sounds like the sort of thing Gordon Brown might say.

Actually, reading it again, it makes me imagine some sort of sci-fi space carnival... "Daddy! Can we go to the future fair?" "Sure we can, Timmy - it's a future fair for all!"

Economical letters to the editor

Sir,

We are not economists by profession, but we didn’t see the credit crunch coming and so that surely puts us in the same boat as most people who are.

Following the letter from 20 economists to the Sunday Times and the letters from 58 economists and another nine economists to the Financial Times, we felt compelled to write.

These three letters variously advocate reducing the deficit at a rate of mumble mumble mumble, by means of cutting spending on mumble mumble mumble and raising taxes on mumble mumble mumble. We fear that each of these positions is dangerously misguided and negligently vague.

We wish to put on record that if we are to bring the deficit down in a way that maintains market confidence in the public finances while safeguarding the recovery, and neither raising taxes too punitively nor harming essential public services, the government must take steps to mumble mumble mumble. Encouragingly, all three main parties seem to be moving towards this view.

It is sometimes said that economics is not an exact science, but we are so confident of our recommendations that we are even using a first-class stamp to post this letter.

Yours faithfully,

Tom Freeman
And all my mates

I saw the picture and couldn't resist it

Oh, and while I'm here:

New Labour, new slogan

Prime Minister Gordon Brown will unveil the slogan of Labour's general election campaign in a speech at the weekend.

Announcing the fact that you’re going to be announcing your new slogan is dumb. It draws attention to the fact that you’re engaging in PR without giving you any of the benefit of that PR actually happening yet. Although it’s debatable how much use slogans really are – especially if they come attached to posters.

I’ve been poking deeply idle fun at the Tories lately, so maybe I should give my own side a few prods.

What, given Labour’s unhappy position in the polls, will this mystery slogan be?

• Better the devil you know. Oh, and we’re introducing a new brimstone tax


• We definitely won’t dash your high expectations


• Nobody likes us, we don’t care


• Going through the motions


• Won’t the look on Cameron’s face be priceless if he loses?


• I hadn’t abolished boom and bust, but I promise I will scrap Horne and Corden


• Governing over the next few years will be horrible – vent your anger by making me do it


• If you vote me out, I’ll write my memoirs. And then I’ll come round each of your houses and read you lengthy extracts

More?

I’ve never shot fish in a barrel before, but…

Now that there’s an automatic generator online, I can let rip a bit more freely:







Update 17/2: A couple more. I've had to do these myself from scratch, using Word, Paint and some sneaky screengrabbing (no Photoshop skillz), so they're a bit amateurish - but I'm all about the concept...

Like shooting fish in a barrel. With a Gatling gun. And fish-seeking bullets.

More sterling spoofery from Clifford Singer:




My own crude effort:

Correction: credit misallocation

Boris Johnson, a Daily Telegraph columnist, writes:

Thank heavens we stayed out of the euro.

That should of course read:

Thank Gordon Brown we stayed out of the euro.

Mature debate on the ‘debt crisis’

The UK government is less dependent on the bond market, and less affected by a rise in borrowing costs, than other states with smaller deficits.

Governments borrow by selling bonds. These bonds pay out yields each year (the interest rate) and they have an expiry date, at which time the original capital is returned to the buyer.

So the amount of bonds a government needs to sell in any year depends on: (a) the amount of new borrowing plus (b) the amount of maturing bonds that need replacing. Longer debt maturity means that (b) will be smaller.

Stephanie Flanders notes that “the average maturity of UK sovereign debt is 14 years. In the US, it's about four years. In France and Germany it's six or seven. In Greece, it's even lower… That makes an enormous difference to the amount of gilts we need to ask the debt markets to buy in a given year.”

In 2010, the budget deficits of Germany, France and Italy will be lower than the UK’s. But in terms of the bonds to be issued this year, Germany will be needing about 386bn euros, France 454bn, Italy 393bn and the UK 279bn.

It’s still a lot, but it’s also a lot less than these other countries.

The longer maturity of UK public debt also means, as Flanders explains, that an increase in the yields payable on new bonds will have a smaller effect on the total cost of servicing national debt.

We in the UK are right to be worried about our deficit. But the idea that we face a ‘debt crisis’ notably worse than other countries looks harder to sustain.

Update 18/3: I saw this nice chart from the Economist, illustrating how much longer-dated UK gilts are than other countries’.

Seeing through walls

Rich at Arbitrary Constant has posted a puzzle:

Name an ancient invention, which is still used in some parts of the world today, that allows people to see through walls.

I think I know what the answer is, although it requires quite a liberal interpretation of “some”.

More Tory posters

It's easy, it's cheap, it's right up my street...




Make your own here and see others here.

Cameron blames Brown for wisteria claims

By our correspondent Frank Blunt

Conservative leader David Cameron has laid the blame for the parliamentary expenses scandal squarely with Gordon Brown. “It is a measure of Labour’s Debt Crisis that even I could be bamboozled into claiming a load of money for the mortgage on my second home. Or possibly my third. Whatever.

“And the fact that I kept claiming for this even after I had started demanding the system be reformed just shows how badly Labour’s Age of Irresponsibility has broken our society.”

Meanwhile, Cabinet papers leaked to the Chilcot Inquiry revealed that Brown himself may have been involved in planting the unruly wisteria that so expensively besmirched Cameron’s beautiful home. Cameron said that there would be “no limit to the amount I would claim on expenses to clear him out. Gordon Brown cannot reform the institution because he is the institution. Whereas under the Conservatives, l’état, ca sera moi.”

“How Gordon Brown can claim to be a reformer with a straight face I just don’t know,” he added, hardly smirking at all.

Scientists admit: global warming ‘a big hoax’

By our correspondent Frank Blunt

The world scientific community yesterday confessed that so-called ‘climate change’ was a cruel trick that they had dreamed up to make us suffer. “It was at a party – or rather, it was during a party that we hadn’t been invited to. Again,” said a spokesprofessor. “We decided to invent reams of ‘evidence’ for a phenomenon that didn’t exist, just to confuse, frighten and annoy people.”

Further frauds have also emerged. An editorial in the Journal of Scientificality today confesses: “We also made evolution up for a laugh, just to see the looks on religious people’s faces. We didn’t expect anyone would actually believe it!” Other newly admitted hoaxes include the germ theory of disease, plate tectonics and gravity.

An ode to quantitative easing

Giles Wilkes, the multitalented git, has composed a really rather excellent poem about quantitative easing, ‘The ballad of Mervyn’s shovel’. Paul Cotterill, the sly dog, has responded with a limerick of his own on the subject and an invitation to submit similarly themed poems.

I cannot resist. Bear in mind that Giles has an unfair advantage in that he actually understands QE, whereas I’ve had to pick up the gist based largely on blog posts by him and others…

Sing a song of £200 billion

Mervyn King was in his counting house, counting out our money;
It didn’t take him very long, a fact he deemed most funny.
“To return our stagnant nation to a land of milk and honey,
I must make things more liquid – or at least, a bit more runny.”

And so he set off to create two hundred billion nicker,
Enough to buy the whole wide world a bathtub full of liquor
Though rather than buy fripperies he thought that he would pick a
Duller option: public debt. But now here’s the real kicker:

“The printing press – a minting mess – will debauch our fair pound,”
Said monetarist sceptics who were swarming all around.
“The value of dear sterling will collapse beneath the ground
And an explosion of inflation will astonish and astound.”

But King replied: “You dolts, it’s not a literal printing press;
I do it electronically, by clicking here on ‘Yes’.
And as for sterling, well it is now really more or less
Where it was back when we started – so no big deal, I guess.”

Now other critics did retort: “It’s no big deal, indeed,
For far too little’s changed vis-à-vis circulation speed
Of money; banks are hoarding what they fear that they might need,
So there’s precious little here on which recovery could feed.”

Yet assets boomed: the FTSE grew from suckling at King’s teat,
The once-tortured housing market had all expectations beat,
Estate agents were dancing in the (up-and-coming) street,
And the Treasury found buyers for all the gilts it could secrete.

Then QE stopped – not with a bang nor whimper, just a grumble
About its consequences, an impenetrable jumble;
Some feared that its reversal could provoke another stumble,
And King concluded: “I predict that (mumble mumble mumble).”


Also, just for good measure, a limerick:

The Old Lady was most displeased
That credit was painfully squeezed
She made billions from nought
And yet I must report
My own bank balance is uneased

BAE, ‘bribes’ and ‘settlements’

BAE, which had bunged a load of money to a couple of governments so that it could make a load more money without any questions being asked, has now bunged a load of money to a couple of governments so that it can go on making a load more money without any questions being asked.

Huzzah for justice.

Wanted: non-political blogs

Yes, I know, the concept is hard to grasp. Think of them as being like blogs, but with a subject matter other than politics, and you may start to get the idea. Anyway, I want to read stuff outside my usual field of obsession. I want to read interesting people who have funny, insightful, articulate, sad, angry, delightful, unexpected, thought-provoking things to say about, well, life. And, if you please, I’d like your help in finding them.

Suggestions?

Image management fail

My new stapler does not have the most fortunate of brand names:


Now, I’m sure it’s meant to be pronounced ‘Rah-pess-co’ and not, you know, the other way, the alarming way, the forehead-slappingly stupid way. And I’m sure they’re a perfectly reputable company run and staffed by perfectly decent people.

But, taking into account that the name can seem a tad iffy to an English-speaking audience, the images and headings on their website makes me mildly concerned about how much common sense their branding people have:


Yes, I know, branding people are contractually required to have the common sense sucked out of them with a special machine when they start work. But even so… ‘punching’?

And what the hell message is the ‘stapling’ woman supposed to be conveying – ‘Well, now I’ve attached one piece of paper to another, I’ll just roll around on this bed that I happen to have in the office. Mmm, they’re attached so firmly…’

Still, their stapler is bloody good. I’ll give them that.