Advent 3

Volume 3 (Baltim to Brail): Bank of England.

An unusually modest admission here: macro-economics (and micro for that matter) is not a subject that Big Fat Pig has mastered. However I did have a part in running a medium-sized business for two decades and acted as an adviser to a large number of businesses of all sizes so I have been prey to the machinations of our central bank, principally the control of interest rates - a power ceded to it by Gordon Brown in 1997, one of his better moves.

The Bank, despite being the de facto  central bank for two and a half centuries, was not nationalised until 1946 by the Attlee government. Rather against my best instinct the Bank's logo reproduced here is the new 'modern' version adopted for no good reason in 2022.

The Bank issues our bank notes (remember those?), sets interest rates and administers the funny money (quantitative easing) created by spendthrift government. Its principal target is to keep inflation at or under 2% pa. Those of us long enough in the tooth to remember the 70s can only applaud this target. I can only wish the Bank good luck.

La Rochelle To The Rescue

I've just about recovered from an excellent weekend in Dublin (is there any other sort?) at the European Rugby Finals. As an appetiser we had the Challenge Cup Final between Glasgow and Toulon. Perfectly decent game of rugby which Toulon won with some ease - and it was nice to be at the Sergio Parisse farewell tour.

Saturday was something different - the best game of rugby I have seen for years. A stoked-up La Rochelle had the cajones to come from a seventeen point deficit to defeat a very good Leinster side. And despite the views of some one-eyed Leinster fans, the referee, Jaco Peyper had a good game. I had steeled myself for a ruinous performance from him. I am (as regular readers will know) no fan of Peyper, but, credit where credit is due, he played his part in a great match. Just to be clear - the sending-off at the game's end was absolutely correct. Peyper could have bottled it. He didn't.

Peyper gets it right

Watching Leinster presents a conundrum. They are stacked with talent and are enviably well-coached. However they come with an off-putting air of entitlement. This had clearly got under La Rochelle's skin and their coach Ronan O'Gara had stoked things to fever pitch. O'Gara presents the rugby consumer with another problem - he is clearly a highly gifted coach and motivator but has lost little of his gobshite qualities since his playing days. His stock is nevertheless high  - I would employ him.

Talking of gobshites, a man who clearly enjoys projecting himself as such is Michael O'Leary. We flew Ryanair to Dublin and you have to accept that the airline does exactly what it says on the tin - no frills but gets you there and back. In an industry littered with financial failures, this is admirable. It must be a sign of my advancing years but the cabin staff looked ridiculously young.

Back home my mood was for some light entertainment and I found it in I Was Monty's Double. A predictable cast of the usual British suspects give life to a young Bryan Forbes's script. It is a reassuring dose of joyful derring-do in the face of war. Very British. Jolly good. 67/100.

The weather is nice. The garden is looking good. I am playing golf tomorrow. God is in his Heaven and all is well in the world. That, of course, is a ridiculous overstatement - lurking on the horizon is an American government debt default. If you think our politicos are tiresome I suggest you watch a bit of CNN to get the full flavour of America's sclerotic politics. If they sneeze, we will catch one hell of a cold. A plague on both their houses. 

Beyond Satire

I am blocked. As in, I can't find any inspiration to write. This despite a whole world turning about me.

Bluntly the shithole of modern life is beyond parody/satire, call it what you will. Rishi Sunak becomes Prime Minister and within a matter of days has to accept the resignation of Gavin Williamson who, it seems, is a graduate of the Prince Andrew school of charm. Inflation (us oldies can tell you youngsters a few tales of how destuctive it is) is poised to go full Tonto. That arch-bastard Trump seems to be on the point of declaring that he will run for President again. I suppose, on the bright side, his candidacy will give me something to write about. He would be funny if he wasn't so very real.

But then I stop and ask myself, a manic depressive, how I feel in myself. Well, there's the rub. I feel great. I have my family. I have my friends. Perhaps it is a fact that, just as I write my best poetry when depressed, so my pen is only barbed (or so I hope) when I'm at my worst.

I feel great, so don't expect any shafts of wit any time soon. Incidentally, not that you could care less, I had successive birdies when I played golf on Monday. Not flukes either - good drive, accurate approach, shortish putt. Sometimes, just sometimes, things look good. And for no reason other than that I like it here is a Kandinsky print. See ya.

Stripes: The First Rite Of Spring

It's a bizarre time to be alive. For the first time in my life (and let's face it, despite my boyish good looks, I'm no spring chicken) Europe is playing host to a trans-national war and, even scarier, one of the protagonists is quite possibly enough of a demented shit to push the nucleat button. I have decided that the best thing to do is to carry on as normal (or as near to normal as the life of the Pig allows) and I have even stopped watching the value of our investments yo-yoing up and down as the kids in the City keep pissing about. Mind you, if and when this horrible Ukraine situation is sorted, we will still have to deal with a problem that I have experienced before, that is to say the ruinous inflation our lords and masters have allowed to be stoked-up in the economy. I did warn them but quite clearly they are not amongst my readers.

So Spring has sprung. And the lawn back at Casa Piggy has got its first stripes of the year. Stripes give me feeling of remarkable well-being. And, lo and behold, I arrived here at Plas Piggy last night (here for a writing camp and to watch the Six Nations) to the pleasing sight of the lawns and the hedges here having been clipped for the first time this year by my faithful retainer (well actaully a bloke from Amlwch who's brilliant).

At the moment it's raining but, this being Wales, we are only ten minutes away from the first of two televised rugby matches tonight - a club match preceding Wales v France. I note with dismay that the magnificent Principality Stadium (so much better than Twickenham) is not expecetd to be full tonight for what should be a cracking match. That's what happens when you sell your soul to television. God, listen to me. So old.

One Last Bit Of Quotable Stuff

Now you know well enough that this a misleading title, because there will always be stuff that I feel I have to share with you, for my own good, even if not for yours. But I shall relent for a few days in case I am risking overload - only after first sharing with you another bit of C.H. Sisson (I know, I know, my admiration for this Bagehotphobe is perhaps bad for my academic soul) culled from The Case of Walter Bagehot:

Economics used to be called Political Econmy, and has lost the adjective in the search for scientific status. But political it remains, like the behavioural sciences at large, which are sciences only in a large, old fashioned sense, whatever may be the claims of their academic exponenents, scrambling for the most profitable description in order to get a full share of the money flowing into universities.

Now that was written in 1972 but if I'd said that now I'd be pretty chuffed with myself. Provocative yes, but illuminated by more than a glimmer of truth. 

Reasons To Be Cheerful ... And Reasons Not

After the holiday splurge of blogging comes the inevitable new year lull while I try to cobble together something to write about. Of course there's plenty out there, but you have to make the effort to galvanise it into prose. So here goes.

Here's a paragraph I read this morning and which is so good that I should share it. It is from Rory Sutherland in the Spectator. He analyses the imperfections (nay imperfectability) of economics, the 'dismal science'. He explains how he confronts the dogma that underlies the forecasting failures of economists:

I try to solve this problem myself by being passionately and unquestioningly dogmatic about stupid things which don't matter: I believe the true word of God can only be expressed in 17th century English, am a great fan of the monarchy and am convinced, without a shred of empirical support, that the drink Dr. Pepper has real medicinal powers. The great thing about this is that by clinging to irrelevant certainties, I am free to change my mind about things which are actually important, such as the minimum wage or the need for free movement of labour. The ability to hold irrelevant things sacred is, I think, a great intellectual defence of conservatism.

Well, amen to most of that - I'm not so sure about Dr. Pepper but I think you'll find that this is true of a good Barolo.

The world is readying itself for the Trump presidency. It's already getting messy. In just the past few days we've had a run-in with Meryl Streep, allegations of a lurid blackmail tape and a bizarre press conference. Let's take them in turn.

Streepgate. La Streep used the platform of the Golden Globes (where she was getting yet another award) to condemn Trump's belittling of a disabled reporter. I have to be even handed here - I almost always find the right-on bleatings of luvvies tiresome and self-indulgent, so I should not put up with this instance just because I find Trump repellent. Of course she had a point. The man gives every indication of being a prize shit. His bellicose reaction (in which he offered the opinion that Streep is one of Hollywood's most overrated actresses) spoke volumes. For fuck's  sake Donald, rise above it.

That sex tape. Does it really exist? Who knows and until someone actually proves it one way or the other this is a non-story which has the liberal press foaming at the mouth and risking a gift to Trump of enough rope with which to hang his accusers. Mind you, it will be balls-achingly funny if it transpires to be true.

That press conference. Out of this world. The man has zero humility. Piers Morgan speaks well of him.  Enough said.

And the irony of this? To the extent he has a political agenda, there are plenty of good things on it. But if only, if only, it was someone less palpably immoral implementing it. And by the way Donald, an election where you lost the popular vote is not one that you won 'easily'. Still, in a gruesome sort of way, it's going to be funny watching him, so funny.

Decency And An Indecent Stunt

Sir Terry Wogan died overnight. An absolute master of his art and by all accounts a man infected by decency. Decency, the reason Graham Norton is so much better a broadcaster than Jonathan Ross, and the reason that Kevin Bridges is better than Frankie Boyle. Being a shitbag is not of itself admirable.

Someone else who comes across as intrinsically decent is Andy Murray. He lost another Grand Slam final to Novak Djokovic this morning - Ausralian Open - no crime in an age when three of the very greatest players of all time are plying their trade: Federer, Nadal and Djokovic. Murray has won two Grand Slams, an Olympic title and, almost single-handedly, the Davis Cup. Why has he not been knighted? Perhaps just a matter of time but the delay seems churlish.

An indecent stunt - Mcdonnell tax return - John McDonnell has published his tax return, with which I have no problem (it's not very interesting and that, of course, is why he feels safe doing it), but more to the point he has challenged Gorgeous George Osborne to do the same - the mealy-mouthed implication is that not to do so somehow unfits a man for public office. This is bollocks. Any old reader of the OG will know that I don't like George Osborne but the fact that his family has money is of no relevance. It is relevant to question (as the self-flagellating McDonnell does but never out loud) whether it is right for anyone at all to be what he would define as 'rich'. By all means, let's have that discussion if we really must, although it's pretty wearying stuff to those of us who grew up with hyperbolic Marxist jealousy. What is not manly (another word that will upset my old bien-pensant mates, and, yes, I confess that is precisely why I've done it) is to indulge in this sort of low attack.

Tax adviser visits HQ

And since you ask, no I strongly doubt that the Google tax deal is a good one for UK plc but I do understand the massively unbalanced nature of the negotiation that led to it. Being a tax collector used to be a respected trade for the intellectually gifted - now the brightest and best work on the other side of the fence for the shit-bag lawyers and accountants who sponge off the behemoths like Google. They are immensely clever and tragically soulless. It is my generation (God damn us) that has made the world like this. For someone at least trying to shed a little light on the topic, try this as a starting point - Sales Tax?

More cheerfully and, as usual several years behind trend, I have just discovered Pramface on Netflix. Has anything ever been quite so comprehensively well cast?

Feeling Old

I feel old most of the time these days. I lack energy and rather more worryingly I have to search around for optimism. It seems to be a condition of encroaching decrepitude that one feels that the world is, despite best efforts, going to hell in a hand cart. What follows is likely to be a disorganised ramble over the state of my world.

On 11 November I happened to mention the "muderous misogynists of ISIS". I did so disparagingly and perhaps flippantly. Two days later these barbarous scumbags massacred 129 souls in Paris. Less than a week later football fans of England and France together sang La Marseillaise. There is always hope.

On the evening before the Paris atrocity I happened to have watched Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow's engrossing procedural on the decade long hunt for Bin Laden. It begs questions about the propriety of "enhanced interrogation" aka torture and, indeed, questions about the value of the whole enterprise to kill Bin Laden. A very good film and proof, as if it were needed, that Bigelow is several times better a director than her over-lauded ex-husband James "Titanic" Cameron. 8/10. America makes films about these issues for commercial release. ISIS (or whatever one must fashionably call them in the post Parisian angst) obliterate ancient monuments. Go figure.

This entry is lacking direction, a product of my malaise. Today we have had the Chancellor's Autumn Statement, notable not so much for Osborne's abandonment of his plans for wretched Tax Credits but for the utter poverty of the Opposition response to it. The Labour Party, author at its best of the post-war welfare consensus, is currently a dangerous joke, led by an intellectul make-weight. This is a bad thing and it rather depresses me.

Traffic in Birmingham. What on earth is going on? This is also a bad thing.

Still, the panto went quite well last week, at least the audiences seemed to enjoy it. I found it pathetically enervating. This may be my malaise or may be the cause of my malaise. Hopefully the latter and a good snooze will prod me out of it.

For a few days I have been out of love with literary theory. This is a bad thing if you're trying to do a PhD. Is the theory industry not in danger of self-indulgence bordering on fraud?

A new series of The Bridge is screening on BBC4. This is a good thing. Saga Noren - what a creation.

Our central heating is playing up. This is a bad thing.

Russia and Turkey, neither terribly sympathetic countries, have been having a stab this week at starting World War III. Kindly get a grip. There are bigger fish to fry than each other.

Time for Grumpy to have that snooze. 

John McDonnell Is Right

In case you've missed it, John McDonnell is the reliably barking, rabid red Shadow Chancellor, a bloke who makes Jeremy Corbyn look vaguely normal. So you will therefore be not a little taken aback by the title of this entry. But I'm sticking to my guns - John McDonnell is right in the limited but important context of tonight's business in the House of Commons.

I refer to Gorgeous George Osborne's positing of a "Fiscal Charter" which will purport to mandate a fiscal surplus in "normal" times whatever that may mean. I've looked at this from both sides now (in the words of the song) and, dear reader, it is nothing more than a political stunt along the lines of the wretched Fixed Term Parliament Act. The Queen in Parliament should remain sovereign. This goes for everything, including the even more wretched European Communities Act 1972. But you'd probably better not get me started on that particular Trojan horse.

If you want to know what should really be the thought about these species of political vainglory, do a bit of digging and look out Osborne's attitude to similar pieces of prestidigitation as practised by that prize donkey, Gordon Brown. Whatever happened to him? To save you time let me tell you that Osborne called it "vacuous and irrelevant". He was right, just as McDonnell is now. 

I Said It Would Be Interesting

I've just amused/terrified myself for an hour first reading an anodyne Robert Peston assessment of Corbyn's economic policies and the string of 'Have Your Say' responses to it - Would Corbyn balance the books?

The Peston article is of no great intrinsic merit, but the readers' comments are by turns hilarious and scary. One can hear the clatter of apoplectic keyboards all around the country. Very occasionally a shaft of light breaks through the stygian gloom of cant and shines like the rail at the end of the nave (I will confess the last simile is stolen from Clive James). One contributor even manages to quote from Hotel California, as if that could be relevant. Priceless stuff. Better than anything I can offer you, so I won't.

47 Days And The Law Of Diminishing Returns

Pol Roger is priced at about five times the cost of Undurraga. Is the champagne therefore four times better than its imitator? I seriously doubt it but I know which I prefer - when funds permit.

My Precious Jag cost me about half of what I might have shelled out for what one might deem an equivalent Aston Martin. Is the Aston therefore twice as good as the PJ? I seriously doubt it, but that would probably not have stopped me paying it had the resources been available.

The Fat Duck is an utterly brilliant experience. Is it therefore, say, twenty times as good as a decent pub meal? I seriously doubt it, but I'd recommend it to anyone.

When I run I feel outrageously virtuous, particularly when I clock over into recently unexplored territory - witness my ludicrous self-esteem when I managed eighty minutes on Monday. The trouble is that to achieve that elusive 'runner's high' you have to keep adding on minutes and/or distance. So this morning I ran for an hour and yet that gave me nowhere near the satisfaction that it did when I breached the hour only last week in Anglesey.

This dear reader is the Law of Diminishing Returns in operation. 

Advent 1

Aeons ago I saw Keith Joseph (then high prophet of the English right) speaking to a student audience. The host institution's resident left had come prepared to heckle and make mischief - good for them, I have always envied the left their passion and organisation. But he disarmed them when he asked his audience to name the most important thinker of the previous two hundred years: a few young fogeys ventured improbable right wing totems, but Joseph posited Karl Marx and rather gratuitously pointed out that it had been Victorian England that had provided a home for this great thinker.

So, I suspect rather to the surprise of those who think they know me, my first cultural influencer is Karl Marx. His theories were the dominant seed of political and economic thought in the century into which  I was born, the starting point for discussion even in economies following a starkly non-Marxist agenda.

I am particularly taken, as I survey the moral wreckage of the business in which I work, with the doctrine of surplus value. The labourer produces daily more than enough for his own subsistence but the capitalist pays him only a subsistence wage and the residue is the surplus value which the capitalist/rentier can purloin for himself.

It took Marx to give his postulated nemesis a name - capitalism. No matter what else you might think, you have to concede that it is pretty cool to have naming rights over your sworn enemy.

This will not be an organised ramble through the back alleys of my mind, so tomorrow we will take a different path and consider civil engineering.

Who's Afraid Of Quantitative Easing?

Robert Peston, BBC Economics Editor, is probably the most trusted economist in the country. This is not saying much, perhaps being on a par with least intolerable lawyer. And to paraphrase Woody Allen, lawyer is only a notch above child molester. Notwithstanding this qualification it is worth having a look at his commentary today on the vastness of QE - Loadsamoney

You will of course be holding off from important investment decisions until you have heard the Overgraduate world economic view, so without further ado I will give you the lowdown. I wonder whether Warren Buffet is one of my followers. The wonderful people at blogger.com make it possible for me to track the distribution of those reading my oeuvre and I have marginally more American hits than British. Which is a bit weird when you think about it.

Anyway that lowdown I promised you. Now it seems to me that economic bubbles burst when even the frigging idiots in capital markets realise that they are bubbles. We had a bubble inflated by private debt and it duly burst when the boys in the flash suits listened to Robert Peston. We supposedly avoided catastrophe and have blown up a brand new bubble using the oxygen of government money. The key's going to be holding your nerve as long as you can and successfully guessing when the coke fuelled loons of the City will twig that this grandiose pyramid scheme has to collapse. Just before that point you must sell up and head for the hills. Your guess is as good as mine.

Last one out switch the lights off and remember - it's only money.

The Godliness Of Growth

Spume is a follower of the blog and his alter ego Ian Marchant has a rather better blog  at Something of the Night . I recommend it because it never indulges in cant. But I beg to take issue with his denigration of capitalist growth in his recent announcement of rejoining the Green Party. The fault in capitalism is not with the system but with the people within it. Growth has lifted swathes out of real poverty. It has also made a hero out of a charlatan like Richard Branson but let's not bung the baby out with the bath water.

A 'rentier' is one who lives off rent or other income from property including intellectual property. In damning the rentier class (and by association the dreaded Tories) an author living off his royalties has to be slightly careful. All intellectual property is theft?  

T + 23. Free Trade. Related Stuff.

One week in and five pounds down. Which is pretty good because I haven't been notably disciplined in my diet. I have however been out running three times including a laboured effort here in Anglesey when I arrived at lunchtime today. I'm simply here to check for storm damage or at least that is my excuse - truth is I love it here and I need a change of scenery after a fraught start to the year at work. No more of that.

I was listening to Nigel Farage on Today yesterday morning and he was as ever interesting and perhaps dangerously plausible . I say dangerously not so much because of Farage himself but on account of the assorted loons his party attracts as members. He was commenting on the perceived problem of Romanian/Bulgarian immigration consequent upon the EU's ordinance of free movement of labour and this leads one to ponder the relationship between free movement and free trade. Why do open trade borders not go hand in philosophical hand with open borders to all and sundry? The answer is our old friend the social contract because as soon as you have a welfare state of any sort you run up against the cult of entitlement being tied to contribution. This realisation engenders sympathy for anarcho-capitalism. And I bet you didn't see that one coming. I am not rebranding The Overgraduate as an anarchist  site but I am saying it makes you wonder. No?

Just For A Moment I Thought I'd Gone Mad

It happened a couple of weeks ago when Vince Cable slagged off the government's wretched Help to Buy Scheme. Saint Vince was making the point that such interventionist policies can stoke up an undesirable asset bubble - he might equally have said that such schemes verge on the immoral, but then Vince is a liberal rather than a libertarian. But credit where credit's due - Vince you were spot on.

But then he started banging on about his bloody Mansion Tax again. I think we all know what I think of that. As for today well talk about having your cake and eating it - Biting the Hand

Why is it by the way that inflation is a 'bad thing' except when it applies to housing? Among much else Mark Twain got this right - Buy land, they're not making it anymore. One of the many wise things I never said but wish I had.

Ship Of Fools Has A Cinema

I have said it before - if our ship of state were rudderless we might arguably be better off than we now are as Gideon and Dave steer us knowingly onto the rocks in the vague hope that the rocks will have eroded to nothing by the time we get there. At least when you are rudderless there is the chance that you will drift to safety.

You will doubtless have been gob-smacked by the sheer euro-effrontery of the Cypriot economic crisis and mused that there is always someone worse off than you - think again and read this excellent article which neatly explains the way we are dishonestly inflating our way out of depression riding on the back of savers - Great Savings Robbery

But enough of such misery. I have been in the city state that is that London this week and that and the nearness of my admirable offspring (both of whom most sensibly reside there) have made me prone to an invigorating optimism. Doubtless this will soon get knocked out of me once back at work next week but then it will only be three weeks till our Irish golf adventure. And in the meantime I have mostly been watching good films.

Exhibit A: Kind Hearts and Coronets. I seem to recall that this was the favourite film of Edward Heath. Doubtless he took great pleasure in the notion of worthless toffs being knocked off by the middle classes. Despite bearing the handicap of Heath's recommendation, this is a gloriously dark species of genteel comedy. 7/10.

Exhibit B: All The President's Men. 9/10. The strap line calls it 'the most devastating detective story of this century' and of course it is made all the more wondrous by the fact of its truth. Watergate manged to be America at its best and worst - best in its detection, worst in its commission. The journalism behind it made me want to be a writer. So how's that working out Dave?

Exhibit C: The Lion King. 8/10. Hakuna matata,as we say around these parts.

So, on balance, all things considered, at the end of the day, basically, you know, I will probably be alright Jack. But that, as any fule no, is not the bloody point.

Of Train Journeys And Inflationary Spirals

It's amazing how much can happen to your average social commentator on one day. Wednesday passed was such a day.  These are things I am reminded I don't like.

• Crowded trains, especially when first class is full and I am thrown in with the sweaty masses.
• People on crowded trains who occupy a second seat with their grubby baggage.
• People on crowded trains who occupy a second seat with their grubby baggage and sit there insouciantly playing on their mobile phones.
• People on crowded trains who occupy a second seat with their grubby baggage and sit there insouciantly playing on their mobile phones and listening to loud shit music on their MP3 players.

Yes, I'm talking about you, you fat pikey.

And another thing - George Osborne and his ridiculous Budget with its pathetic attempts to rig the housing market and to stoke up a fresh inflationary spiral fuelled by easy credit. Will we ever even make a meaningful effort to wean ourselves off our addiction to debt? I've got a borrowed tenner says no.

Ooh ooh, Mr Peebly

However one good thing which happened in the last week was the outright destruction of an English scrummage by a fat looking bloke with bad hair. Adam Jones was the real star of Wales's evisceration of an over-hyped though honourable England team and gave hope to all of us who aim to maintain rugby as the game for warriors of all shapes. England's 2015 RWC group containing both Wales and Australia begins to look very tasty. As for the Welsh I repeat my mantra that they really do have to start caring less about beating England and rather more about giving a pasting to the likes of Australia, because they are good enough, notwithstanding they are also good enough to lose to Samoa. Go figure. They need to tap into that pathology that occupies them when the damned English hove into view.

Old Dave's Almanack 2013

Including a review of last year's predictions and this year's less than confident sooth-saying.

Here was my predictive menu for 2012:

2012? Well France will win the Six Nations now they have a decent coach. Wales will not be as good as their followers are being encouraged to anticipate. England will be half-decent which will make the appointment of a permanent new coach all the trickier. Anticipate serious civil unrest in southern Europe. My capital wealth will be further eroded by the malfeasance of others. Goldman Sachs will prosper, though hopefully not in India. GB will win 16 gold medals at the Olympics. Our press will charcterise this as failure. Public sector employees will eventually have to accept that their pensions are unsustainable and their industrial action will fail to attract its own Billy Elliot style romanticism - there will be no ballet dancing son of a geography teacher plucking at the heart-strings of the public.
 

Time to eat some humble pie.

• France disappointed me but they do have a decent coach and their autumnal hammering of the Australians augurs well. They suffer from the same problem that besets English professional soccer - a domestic championship stuffed to the gunnels with foreign galacticos.
• Wales set off as if determined to rub my nose in it, winning all five games to take a Grand Slam (albeit with some spineless assistance from that show-pony Steve Walsh) but have since then lost seven consecutive matches, including home defeats by Argentina and Samoa. On balance I got this one right.
• I was spot on about England and the coaching appointment.
• 25% unemployment in the southern european states can surely not be sustained peacably for too much longer.
• According to my banker I am marginally richer than I was a year ago. This is a recovery built on foundations of sand.
• Gloriously wrong on the Olympics. See earlier blogs from my vantage point as a volunteer under label 'London 2012'. A sheer bloody triumph - the Olympics that is, not my blog.
• Public sector pensions - start a conversation on this one with friends in the pub and wait till the teacher present goes for a piss to find out what people really think. Not pretty. Actually, don't start that conversation - save your sanity and just let this run its own mucky course.

2013: France to win the Six Nations but no Grand Slam; England to continue to progress but haltingly; Wales to recover; Lions to win series in Australia. I can't be arsed with any precise political predictions because we will merely have a tiresome early setting of ground for a UK election not apparently due until 2015 - this setting of the date years in advance being one of the powers President Dave vainly took unto himself upon his non-election in 2010. America will stagger towards recovery not because of any political will but because it is America. The American century may be over but don't expect this remarkable country to lie down and be upstaged without a fight, certainly not by as immoral a beast as China.

It is midday on 1 January and already I feel tired. Best advice I can give is that which I use to sustain myself: don't let the bastards wear you down.

 

Changing One's Mind

Sometimes one does. Change one's mind that is. But not so very often. However I will confess to a particular youthful indiscretion. Many political ages ago I was engaged in a rugby club conversation about exchange rate policy. This says rather a lot about the rugby club of which I am a member - we will talk about anything and everything and just because it is coarse to say that the single currency is a bag of toss does not of course make it wrong. I digress. The conversation to which I refer predated the euro's creation and was about its precursor the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM or the 'money snake' as I seem to recall it being called). The question was whether Britain should join the snake. My reponse was one of youthful ignorance - yes we should. Poor deluded child I had no idea that when the day came for a right regal pissing contest George Soros could not only urinate further up the wall than our sovereign state but right over the top of the whole bloody building. Nice work George - now see that camel over there, well get it through this needle for me will you.

So here's the thing. I was wrong then. Monetary union, no matter how loose, can only work with political and fiscal union. And the people who tell you otherwise are often mendacious technocrats who think you're stupid and that their intended end justifies this means.

On the subject of people who change their minds, another tale from my youth, this one a piece of the landscape of my teens. Being a somewhat obnoxious youth I was talking politics with a rather stupid adult who admiringly commented that the only contemporary politician who never changed his mind was Enoch Powell. It was at this stage that the penny dropped that maybe a change of mind was other than a sign of weakness, especially when wrong.

Mention of Powell does put me in mind of the rather splendid joke in Jonathan Coe's The Rotters' Club wherein a character posits Powell and Tolkien as two major racist thinkers. The nice in-joke is that Powell and Tolkien both attended King Edward's School Birmingham, as did the extravagantly gifted Coe. I'm firmly of the school that approves of in-jokes so long as I get them. Anything else is self-indulgent.

Egeus. Father of Hermia. A man who believes that his daughter should be put to death if she will not marry the suitor of his choice. Maybe I haven't mentioned this but I will shortly be giving my Egeus in open air Shakespeare. You didn't know? Apologies if I haven't mentioned this. Playbill attached. Anyway the point I'm building up to is this: under some directorial encouragement I am adopting Enoch Powell as my model for Egeus because nothing will make my Egeus change his mind. That is unless the director tells me otherwise of course. I'm not stupid.