Nick Clegg's unfortunate conversation gives us an excellent excuse to post a favourite Reagan moment.
This soundbite preceded a radio interview in the height of the Cold War. Unfortunately for the President, the microphone was broadcasting live to the nation at the time.
 The funniest story of the weekend concerned Nick Clegg. His description of his frontbench colleagues, delivered on an airplane in the row behind a Sunday Mirror journalist, makes fabulous reading.
I was inclined to believe that mere inexperience had led him to do something so incautious. After all, it's something you wouldn't do twice if you were caught doing it once.
Erm, except if you are Nick Clegg.
Remember this story from the New Statesman? That thrusting young Minger Nick Clegg should learn to swivel his head to spy who is sitting within earshot before shouting into a mobile phone about an aged Olympic sprinter off to a poor start.
While waiting on Bournemouth station for the London train, it was impossible for your columnist not to overhear the Lib Dems' home affairs chap itemising, between sips of Red Bull, his leader Sir Ming Campbell's political crimes.
Ming the Mediocre, according to Clegg, is hesitant and disorganised, commits avoidable errors and lacks momentum but - this was the loyal bit - is capable of recovering.
It is extraordinary to have made this mistake twice.
Incidentally, although Mr Clegg's office suggests that the Sunday Mirror man may have misheard their boss because the plane was "noisy", the Lib Dem leader is renowned for his loud voice in conversation.
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Could Hillary Clinton's appointment be unconstitutional? Ben Smith thinks it could be: With Hillary's expected appointment tomorrow comes a round of buzz about "emoluments" and specifically the question of whether, under a fairly straightforward reading of the Constitution, her appointment isn't constitutional.
At issue is Article I, Section 6, which says, "No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time." That is, if the Cabinet, or other, post got a pay hike during the term of the senator, the senator couldn't take the job. During Clinton's Senate term, Bush raised the Cabinet's pay.
And there are serious lawyers who see this, legally speaking, as a real obstacle.
However, there have been other occasions when this has arisen - the appointment of Llyod Bentsen as Treasury Secretary for instance. The solution is to cut the salary of the incoming Senator/Secretary.
As of today, it looks like Hillary Clinton will be answering the phone after all.
Shortly after the 1997 election was called, the question of the House of Commons cash-for-questions report became one of the biggest issues in the news.
Journalists asked for the Commons report to be made public since it would allow voters to be in full possession of the facts, allowing them to make a judgement on the MPs under investigation.
Tory staff were desperate to allow publication. Why? Because nothing in the report could possibly be as damaging as refusing to publish it.
But we weren't allowed to have our way. Senior ministers informed us that this simply would not be possible, since there was a process to go through. This was a report to the Commons, that would have to be considered by MPs and published by them. And that couldn't happen, because the Commons wasn't sitting.
I recall our frustration. Respect for one traditional view of procedure was being allowed to override political common sense and, as it so happened, the best democratic outcome. We staff reflected that new Labour wouldn't have allowed that to go on. They would have found a way to get the thing out there and end the row.
Peter Mandelson would have done, Alastair Campbell would have done.
We didn't. And the result was a political disaster (for the Conservatives) - the row carried on until election day.
Watching Labour ministers respond to the Green affair, I realise that what had happened to us has now happened to them. Respect for one interpretation of the rules is leading ministers to take a stance that is both politically very damaging to them and doesn't serve the public interest either.
Harriet Harman understands this. She said that while police operational independence must be respected, she is concerned about what happened and wants to protect MPs. The response of other ministers - particularly the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and Geoff Hoon - has been tone deaf.
It's what happens when you've been in power a long time.
I thought Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell were back. Not on this one they weren't.
Today in Times Comment
And from the rest of the papers...
- Denis MacShane: (The Telegraph) - Heads should roll for arresting Damian Green
- Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: (The Telegraph) - World stability hangs by a thread as economies continue to unravel
- Janet Daley: (The Telegraph) - Arresting MPs and nationalising banks happen in dictatorships
- Leading Article: (The Telegraph) - Nuclear threat hangs over the subcontinent
- Jackie Ashley: (The Guardian) - Ignorance is no defence. Smith failed in her first duty
- Misha Glenny: (The Guardian) - This was not global jihad. Its roots are far closer to home
- John Pilger: (The Guardian) - Kafka has a rival. Today, the Foreign Office lectures us on human rights
- Leading Article: (The Guardian) - Recession.com
- Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: (The Independent) - Muslims must confront the truth about Mumbai
- Bruce Anderson: (The Independent) - Parliament's rights are under threat – and so are ministers'
- Paddy Ashdown: (The Independent) - Corruption and terrorism will flourish without global governance
- Leading Article: (The Independent) - India and Pakistan have a common extremist enemy
- Melanie Phillips: (The Daily Mail) - The Mumbai atrocity is a wake-up call for a frighteningly unprepared Britain
- Clive Crook: (Financial Times) - Bernanke and the risk of deflation
And from around the world...
 You might enjoy:
- Guido Fawkes in Order Order: Whistleblowers Still Welcome Here
- Brendan O'Neill in Spiked: Mumbai: the nihilism that dare not speak its name
- Fraser Nelson in Coffee House: What stature does the House have now?
- Marc Ambinder in A reported blog on politics: Four years from now
- Mary Beard in A Don's Life: Robert Louis Stevenson and a prehistoric Pompei
At least they'll never be asked how to spell their surname again. The Washington Post takes a look at America's other Obamas. And they're truly a rare breed: According to databases, there might be fewer than 20 Obama families in the United States, compared with more than 11,000 Clintons and 60,000 Bushes
Following yesterday's raid on Damian Green's offices, Comment Central takes a look at five other leak scandals.
 1) Hugh Dalton
As Chancellor of the Exchequer, Dalton had further to fall than many leakers. And fall he did. In 1947, he went to deliver the Budget Report. He'd nearly made it into the Chamber when he ran into an Evening Standard journalist. The following comments about the contents of the Budget effectively ended Dalton's career. Dalton was forced to resign and though he made it back into the Cabinet the following year he never regained his political clout.
2) Sarah Tisdall
When Sarah Tisdall sent documents to the Guardian, it probably didn't cross her mind that she'd end up in prison for three months. Tisdall was a junior clerk in the Foreign Office when she leaked information about when US cruise missiles would be arriving in Britain. Following a court order, she was sentenced under the Official Secrets Act in 1983.
 3) Clive Ponting
In this case, it wasn't loose lips that sunk ships. The General Belgrano, an Argentinian cruiser, was actually attacked by the British in the Falklands War. The government argued it threatened British lives, but MOD employee Ponting leaked the information that the ship was heading out of the exclusion zone at the time. He claimed that the public had a right to know. Although he fully expected to be imprisoned, the shaving kit he brought to court was not necessary. He was acquited.
4) Jimmy Thomas
Careless talk cost lives. Or in Jimmy Thomas's case, his job. The Labour Cabinet Minister reportedly divulged budget secrets to a Tory rival while on the golf course. And he did it in style - shouting 'Tee up' as a not very subtle hint that tax on tea would go up. He was forced to resign in the 1930s.
 5) Peter Wright
If you're going to leak you might as well write a book while you're at it. The publication of Spycatcher in 1987 rolled out a host of MI5 secrets, including their plotting against Harold Wilson. The Thatcher government granted the publisher's every wish by banning the book in Britain. Sales leapt, politicians raged but former MI5 officer Peter Wright was never extradited from his new home in Australia.
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To assist the Metropolitan Police, whose work I take very seriously, and who can't spare a minute to do anything that is inessential in the war against crime, I have prepared a dossier. It allows them to follow a disturbing pattern of leaks.
They may wish, after informing the appropriate ministers, to send officers round to the home of the offending politician.
The Times January 4th 1988: Mrs Margaret Thatcher was at the cente of the political storm last night after the leak of a confidential Whitehall memorandum disclosing that tough new rules are to be applied to state support for scientific research and development.
Officials at the department refused to comment on 'information that fails into someone's hands as a result of an unauthorized disclosure'.
Sources did confirm, however, that the memorandum from Mr Anthony Kesten, a senior official in the department's official Research and Technology Policy Unit, was genuine. They also indicated that a high-level internal inquiry is likely to begin today into how the document came to be passed to Mr Gordon Brown, opposition Treasury spokesman.
The Times July 2nd 1991: The government last night seemed to be retreating from plans to include in its citizens' charter tougher consumer protection measures for users of the privatised utilities.
New draft documents leaked by Labour suggest that ministers and officials inthe trade department have dropped proposals for a reiew of the utilities and the performance of their regulators.
Labour claimed the latest document showed that Mr Major's proposed charter was worthless. Gordon Brown, shadow trade secretary, said the draft document had been prepared for the prime minister and circulated last Thursday to be included in the charter. It was drawn up after ministerial and official discussions of an earlier draft leaked by Labour.
The Times July 18th 1991: [Defence Secretary Tom King] said that Labour claims, led by Gordon Brown, the shadow industry secretary and local MP, that the Rosyth base was to be closed had caused considerable alarm. People were led to believe that decisions had been taken when they had not.
Against a background of noisy protests from Labour MPs, he said that he hoped that the Leader of the Opposition, who was in his place, would consider the way a leaked document had been used and the fact that Rosyth was a defence ministry site used for the refitting of nuclear submarines.
He added: "The Leader of the Opposition will realise that these are grave matters and I am sure that he will be concerned that people on his front bench used leaked documents from such a source as though this was not a matter of considerable gravity.''
He hoped that those who hoped to be the future government would take seriously the fact that people who might be working for them felt free to leak documents no matter what their nature might be.
The Times December 19th 1991: If Michael Heseltine wanted to leak a government document, he would have had more sense than to do so through a Labour spokesman.
He can therefore be acquitted of responsibility for the disclosure by Gordon Brown of his memorandum to fellow cabinet ministers arguing for a different treatment of EC funds to support the less well-off regions of the UK. The leak, more to the point, is salutory. The case he makes is now assured the public airing it deserves.
Sunday Times June 6th 1993: Major blamed the party's opponents for spreading ``scare stories'' when he addressed the Tory women's conference in London on Friday. Yesterday, Michael Portillo, chief secretary to the Treasury, followed suit when asked about an apparent leak of Whitehall information to Gordon Brown, Labour's shadow chancellor.
Brown said that a team at the social security department was exploring ways to cut housing and sickness benefits.
Evening Standard June 11th 1993: The documents the Government was today hit by fresh leaks of its planned clampdown on social security spending.
As ministers tried to brush over the banana skin of last night's leak on plans to tax invalidity benefit claims and make them harder, the Labour Party received more than 30 other pages of documents.
The documents were given to Shadow Chancellor Gordon Brown and his Social Security colleague Donald Dewar
Daily Mirror June 2nd 1993: Secret papers showing plans for a Government blitz on the welfare state provoked outrage last night.
Premier John Major was accused of threatening cuts ``deeper and more insidious'' than anything contemplated under Margaret Thatcher.
The Whitehall papers leaked to Shadow Chancellor Gordon Brown reveal that seven task forces of senior civil servants have been ordered to examine the system from top to bottom for benefits to axe.
Daily Mirror March 18th 1994: Virginia Bottomley's appointment as Minister for the Family was exposed as a sham last night. A leaked official document revealed that her ministry has rejected every option for better childcare.
Despite the Government's party-of-the-family rhetoric, the Department of Health has squashed every idea on one of the key areas of family policy. Shadow Chancellor Gordon Brown, who will unveil Labour's childcare plans next week, said: "This shows that Mrs Bottomley's appointment is just window dressing".
Daily Mirror September 10th 1994: Shock Tory plans to dismantle the Welfare State have been exposed in a leaked Government document. Whitehall committees have been working on how to slash or means-test benefits paid to every family in the country.
Child benefit, pensions, sick pay, and unemployment benefit have all been targetted for cuts, the document called the "Review of Social Security - Second Stage" shows.
Shadow Chancellor Gordon Brown, who was sent the paper, said six of the seven Treasury-inspired committees had already reported.
Independent on Sunday May 4th 1997: A front bencher from the last parliament said frankly: "None of us has the first sodding idea about what government means, whether any of us will be any good at it, or even what being good at it means....... Some of my colleagues have made a career out of being a conduit for leaks from the Civil Service to the press. That's hardly going to be much good in government."
Liam, it's time for your soup.
Unless I have misunderstood it badly, Monday marked an important moment - a change in the media narrative and (as this morning's Populus poll strongly suggests) public opinion away from Gordon Brown after months where he has done a little better.
Why did this happen? Surely if being a serious man for serious times worked for the Prime Minister last week, it would be working now.
Here's my theory - it's all about risk aversion.
The economist Daniel Kahneman conducted experiments to develop the prospect theory for which he later won the Nobel Prize. The results show that when people face the chance of losing gains they are risk averse. When they are in a loss position and hoping to make gains they are willing to take bigger risks.
Translated into politics this suggests that when a downturn is in prospect people will agree that it is no time for a novice. But when it arrives they will be more receptive to change.
It may be that what happened on Monday is that the downturn which had merely been in prospect, began to become a reality. The figures showed people we were now in a terrible position. The disaster is no longer a prospect, it is a reality.
Today in Times Comment
And from the rest of the papers...
- Jeff Randall: (The Telegraph) - Everyone except the Government knows we’re spending too much
- Con Coughlin: (The Telegraph) - Barack Obama turns to the old guard in Washington
- Clive Aslet: (The Telegraph) - It started with housing and will end there
- Leading Article: (The Telegraph) - We must stand shoulder to shoulder with India
- Simon Jenkins: (The Guardian) - This show's diplomacy is for real - and it's worth a hundred Milibands
- M J Akbar: (The Guardian) - After Mumbai, an end to complacency?
- Martin Kettle: (The Guardian) - Genius, or an empty gesture by men groping in the dark?
- Leading Article: (The Guardian) - India's 9/11
- Anil Dharker: (The Independent) - In Mumbai's teeming history lies the hope for our recovery
- Steve Richards: (The Independent) - What did you do in the war, Gordon?
- Terence Blacker: (The Independent) - The Army has lost the moral high ground
- Leading Article: (The Independent) - A terrorist atrocity with tangled regional roots
- Comment: (The Daily Mail) - Drawing new battle lines on pensions
- Philip Stephens: (Financial Times) - Broken banks put state back in the driving seat
And from around the world...
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- Robert Peston in Peston's Picks: Weep for Woolies
- Jeff Zeleny in The Caucus: Obama’s Speechwriter Moves to the White House
- Bryony Gordon in Telegraph Blogs: How (not) to solve a problem like youth crime
- Charles Bremner in Le Blogue: Matisse reaches owner 70 years after Nazi theft
- John Dickerson in Slate: How To Start Thanksgiving Arguments and How To Win Them
Yesterday my old colleague Nick Wood wrote a piece on Conservative Home about Tory prospects. Interestingly, Tim Montomerie singled this piece out. He said that he regarded it as the best piece he had ever published on the site.
I say interestingly, because Nick made this observation: At some point in the next 18 months, they [the Tories] will inherit the worst legacy of any party since the war.
They will have to be ruthless in pruning Brown’s client state, they will have no choice but to raise taxes higher still [my italics] and they will have to find a way of ensuring that the City never again brings the country to its knees.
Do I take it that Tim singled the piece out because he thinks this a reasonable judgment?
Robert Shrimsley records visits to Dr Darling and Dr Osborne. It's joyous stuff. Here's how it starts: So, Dr Darling, what's the verdict?
Well I'm afraid it's extremely bad news. You're in a very bad way.
Is it treatable?
Hard to say, but the important thing to state at the outset is that you didn't get it from me. Have you been to America recently.
Yes.
That's probably where you got it.
I see. What is it exactly?
American disease.
Don't miss the rest of it.
One way of increasing personal debt repayment? Stop putting a minimum repayment amount on the bill.
I should have realised this earlier, I suppose, (because I take an interest in such things) but placing a minimum payment amount reduces repayment. The reason is simple - anchoring.
If you give someone a randomly selected two digit number and then ask them to make a bid for an item under £100, the bid they make will be related to the random number you gave them.
Mimimum payments on bills work in exactly the same way. The science blog Frontal Cortex records: The research, by University of Warwick Psychology researcher Dr Neil Stewart, is to be published in Psychological Science, in a paper entitled "The Cost of Anchoring on Credit Card Minimum Payments".
It focuses on the psychological phenomenon of "anchoring" in which arbitrary and irrelevant numbers bias people's judgments.
The research reveals that anchoring affects the way people repay their credit card bills. For those people who make only partial repayments of the outstanding balance (about 35% of card holders), the suggested minimum payment on the credit card statement acts as an anchor and lowers the actual repayments people choose to make.
Dizzy (one of the very best independent UK blogs) has this very insightful point to make about the private finance initiative: Three of the key financial backers in the private consortiums are HBOS, Abbey National and RBS? That's significant because they are all institutions that are now partly in 'public ownership' thanks to an injection fo £50 billion in recapitalisation.
That means that the Government is not only propping them up, but it is also paying them premium rent for projects it got them to build and rewarding them for taking a risk that it is itself now liable for.
In fact, the Government is now paying the banks to take a risk which they are no longer taking because all the risk is back in the hands of the Government as a significant, powerful and influential shareholder.
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You may not be entirely surprised to discover that Christopher Hitchens is not thrilled with the idea of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State: In matters of foreign policy, it has been proved time and again, the Clintons are devoted to no interest other than their own. A president absolutely has to know of his chief foreign-policy executive that he or she has no other agenda than the one he has set.
Who can say with a straight face that this is true of a woman whose personal ambition is without limit; whose second loyalty is to an impeached and disbarred and discredited former president; and who is ready at any moment, and on government time, to take a wheedling call from either of her bulbous brothers?
This is also the unscrupulous female who until recently was willing to play the race card on President-elect Obama and (in spite of her own complete want of any foreign-policy qualifications) to ridicule him for lacking what she only knew about by way of sordid backstairs dealing.
What may look like wound-healing and magnanimity to some looks like foolhardiness and masochism to me.
And there I was thinking that Hitch's objections would be softened by Henry Kissinger's Hillary endorsement.
 Well, we all need some downtime in this financial crisis. And for economic bloggers it's arrived in the form of a caption contest.
Freakonomics fans are going head-to-head with Marginal Revolution readers to see who can come up with the best caption for this photo. What were President Bush and Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman talking about?
Here's my favourite (from Freakonomics): So then I said to Cheney “Duh! Piece-wise continuous functions are ALWAYS Reimann integrable, so just invert the matrix and use a polynomial distributed lag to eliminate the heteroskedasticity! What a lightweight!”
You can see the Marginal Revolution contenders here.
Paul Krugman himself will deliver the final judgment. Let blogging battle commence.
(Photo credit: Economist.com)
Today in Times Comment
And from the rest of the papers...
- George Pitcher: (The Telegraph) - case: Courts should dispense justice, not comfort
- Adam Edwards: (The Telegraph) - Death of pubs will be death of UK
- Liz Hunt: (The Telegraph) - Britain's Josef Fritzl, Baby P: the system needs to change
- Leading Article: (The Telegraph) - Banks run risk of nationalisation
- Ken Livingstone: (The Guardian) - Death of the old dogmas
- Jonathan Steele: (The Guardian) - This is no sop. It is a vote to end the occupation of Iraq
- Timothy Garton Ash: (The Guardian) - Only a strategic partnership with China will keep this new dawn bright
- Leading Article: (The Guardian) - Buddy, can you spare a dime?
- Robert Fisk: (The Independent) - 'Nobody supports the Taliban, but people hate the government'
- Adrian Hamilton: (The Independent) - Hillary would be Obama's first mistake
- Matthew Norman: (The Independent) - Funny how liberalism's enemies embrace it when they need it
- Leading Article: (The Independent) - Time for a royal intervention
- Quentin Letts: (The Daily Mail) - He bawled abuse, like a drunk entering a Wild West saloon
- Robert Shrimsley: (Financial Times) - A visit to the economic doctor
And from around the world...
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And while we're on the subject of pumpkin pies and cranberry sauce...
Our Archive Blog asks the most pressing question of all. Thanksgiving or Christmas - who thought of the turkey first?
Nothing quite beats Sarah Palin's turkey press conference. But this little gem from the Onion comes close.
Happy almost Thanksgiving to all our American readers.
According to The World in 2009, there's at least one country looking at a healthy bank account next year.
Well, we know it's not Britain. So have a guess.
Which economy is predicted to be the only double-digit grower in 2009?
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Think you have what it takes to be a member of Obama's Cabinet?
Try your hand at the application form as imagined by the New Yorker. My favourite question? Have you ever socialized with:
a. A Baldwin brother?
b. A Serbian war criminal?
c. A Senate page?
d. Senator Joseph Lieberman?
Jon Stewart's missing her already. Are you?
Here's Comedy Central's roundup of Sarah Palin's most magical moments.
Today in Times Comment
And from the rest of the papers...
- Simon Heffer: (The Telegraph) - Conservatives need to look after the Middle Class - and Britain
- Peter Hoskin: (The Telegraph) - Were our young people born to live on debt?
- Irwin Stelzer: (The Telegraph) - Brown and Cameron are both right
- Leading Article: (The Telegraph) - Tories must lead us out of this mess
- Jonathan Freedland: (The Guardian) - Obama's choice of a team of rivals says much about the President he will be
- Madeleine Bunting: (The Guardian) - A telling reminder of our captivity to myth
- Mark Thomas: (The Guardian) - The jolt of injustice
- Leading Article: (The Guardian) - Locked out
- Hamish McRae: (The Independent) - Will the world economy really start to grow next year?
- Deborah Orr: (The Independent) - The good old days? I don't think so
- Vince Cable: (The Independent) - Warning: this economic crisis could drag on for a decade
- Leading Article: (The Independent) - The world must hope that Obama gets it right
- Alex Brummer: (The Daily Mail) - I've had it with New Labour
- Martin Wolf: (Financial Times) - Why fairly valued stock markets are an opportunity
And from around the world...
My erstwhile blogging partner Murad Ahmed watched the last episode of the Sopranos last night. And he doesn't know what to watch next.
The Wire? No, he's watched that. And West Wing too.
So what next? Any ideas?
Last night on Newsnight Yvette Cooper repeated a line that the Prime Minister has been using. She says it would be wrong to leave people alone to deal with the recession.
This, she argued, is what happened in the 1980s.
I was surprised to find them refighting the 1983 General Election. But I wonder what it is that they think should have been done?
Alice Miles tells this tale, recounted to her by a downcast political adviser: I made my way to the Shadow Cabinet room, which was in half-darkness. You could almost touch the gloom. The problem we faced was appalling and insoluble. In that dark, gloomy room at 11 at night, we had to choose
Read her brilliantly insightful piece on a fateful political decision and what it means for the way yesterday's PBR will play out
Interesting press release has just dropped: Sacked “shock jock” Jon Gaunt today welcomed the support of human rights group Liberty in his legal battle against talkSport radio.
Gaunt is bringing the legal challenge after his contract as a freelance presenter with the station was terminated on 19 November, two weeks after he called a Redbridge Council representative a 'Nazi', a 'Health Nazi' and an 'ignorant pig' during an on-air discussion about the Council's ban on placing vulnerable children with foster parents who smoke.
Liberty are right to think this an important free speech case.
Today in Times Comment
And from the rest of the papers...
- Boris Johnson: (The Telegraph) - Meddler Brown's massive gamble
- Tracy Corrigan: (The Telegraph) - Darling fails to do the business
- Simon Heffer: (The Telegraph) - An election by late spring 2010
- Leading Article: (The Telegraph) - Labour lands Briton in a £1 trillion hole
- Will Hutton: (The Guardian) - Bold, imaginative and it might just work
- George Monbiot: (The Guardian) - The planet is now so vandalised that only total energy renewal will save us
- Polly Toynbee: (The Guardian) - At last the party of social justice has woken up
- Leading Article: (The Guardian) - Crisis economics
- Steve Richards: (The Independent) - At last Brown is forced to be bold
- Hamish McRae: (The Independent) - A monumental debt that takes us back to the 70s
- Dominic Lawson: (The Independent) - Shame on the doctors prejudiced against Down syndrome
- Leading Article: (The Independent) - A gamble that will decide Britain's political future
- Quentin Letts: (The Daily Mail) - Time to abandon ship as Darling sets course for disaster
- John Muellbauer: (Financial Times) - The world's central banks must buy assets
And from around the world...
- Rob Herbert: (The New York Times)- Not a moment too soon
- Eugene Robinson: (The Washington Post) - Adrift with two captains
- Gail Collins: (International Herald Tribune) - Time for him to go
- Eugene A. Ludwig:: (The Wall Street Journal) - Thumbs up for the Citigroup bailout
- Yang Yiyong: (China Daily) - Joint efforts needed to weather challenge
- Nikolai Petrov: (The Moscow Times) - Kremlin guide to dismissing disobedience
More maddening imprecision on tax and spending.
The Daily Telegraph this morning has this to say: Other advanced economies used the boom years to balance their accounts and run surpluses. Britain has one of the worst deficits in the world. "A stitch in time saves nine," said Mr Brown. It is a bit late for that now.
The same criticism applies to the Conservatives. Their complaint that Mr Brown "should have fixed the roof while the sun was shining" would carry more force had they not been insisting until last week that they would match Labour's spending pledges.
There are two points worth making.
The first is that during the years in which the sun was shining the Conservatives did not promise to match Labour's spending. They argued that spending was too rapid and, at the last election, argued that borrowing should be reduced out of slower spending growth.
The spending round they agreed to match was the first two years of this one. This was not the period during which the sun was shining and the round was already very tight.
The only reason for reducing an already tight round in the third year (which the Tories had in any case not promised to match) was due to the current crisis.
Second, I do not recall during this entire period that the Telegraph was calling for reduced borrowing. Someone may put me right, but I thought what they wanted was tax cuts.
The Telegraph may have urged the Tories to slow spending growth but they also wanted them to promise to give that back.
If they - or Fraser Nelson, or David Davis's leadership campaign or any of the other punk tax cutters -had had their way and the Tories had committed to tax cuts (and that's what they all wanted and excoriorated George Osborne for not promsising) the Conservatives would now be in all sorts of difficulties.
They would have had to drop a tax plan they had already offered.
Do you ever hear one of these people admit that the attempt to get the Tories to promise upfront overall tax cuts - over which I have been arguing with them for years - was a gross error and that it is a matter of relief that the Tories did not follow their advice?
No. You don't. They just move smoothly on.
No one, no one, no one called for the Tories to adopt a more fiscally conservative position than they did. In fact few of them do even now.
It is very difficult to satisfy the demands of people who slide from one argument to the next - changing the years in which they propose things should be done; changing their position on borrowing; confusing tax cuts, a fiscal stimulus and a reduction of borrowing; never ever sticking precisely to what they said in an earlier argument - before confidently accusing everyone else of incoherence.
Why is the PBR on a Monday?
When Gordon Brown was Chancellor he moved Budgets to Wednesdays. The reason? Because on Wednesdays the Leader of the Opposition has to prepare for Prime Ministers Questions. That gives him less time to prepare for his Budget reply.
The Monday move has a similar sort of logic.
Since it is the Shadow Chancellor and not the Opposition Leader who has to reply to a PBR, having it on a Wednesday is pointless.
But on a Monday the House starts later. The Chancellor doesn't rise until 3.30. This means that by the time the media set to work on it, it will be about 4.15.
On Mondays, in other words, there is much less time to dissect what the Chancellor has said. And much less time to find hidden bad news and avoid the Government's spin.
Today in Times Comment
And from the rest of the papers...
- Janet Delay: (The Telegraph) - Darling must cut whole state not just tax pennies
- Tom Leonard: (The Telegraph) - Obama to get body building help from Schwarzenegger
- Philip Johnston: (The Telegraph) - I want the leaves swept not council adverts
- Leading Article: (The Telegraph) - Darling must cut tax and public spending
- Jackie Ashley: (The Guardian) - Cameron is gambling that today's fiscal boost will fail
- Max Hastings: (The Guardian) - At times like this we should be grateful for leaders who enjoy managing a crisis
- Gary Younge: (The Guardian) - Americans have never felt so excited and yet so depressed
- Leading Article: (The Guardian) - Israeli-Palestinian peace talks at the eleventh hour
- Johann Hari: (The Independent) - Navratilova leads the way for lesbians
- Bruce Anderson: (The Independent) - Brown is not after economic recovery - he's after votes
- Andreas Whittam Smith: (The Independent) - Has the time finally come for us to join the Euro?
- Leading Article: (The Independent) - Putting money in the pockets of the consumer makes sense
- Richard Kay: (The Daily Mail) - Mandy gives Brown six of the best
- Clive Crook: (Financial Times) - How to reinvent the Republican party
And from around the world...
I have just received some good news in my inbox. Here is how it starts: Greetings to you. With due respect, I am Mr. Lukas Ociuo (esq), the legal director here at the Ministry of Works Abidjan Ivory Coast.
Mr Ociuo is a very assiduous man. He wishes to send to me the money due to a deceased contractor, who shares my surname and might therefore be related (building contractors called Finkelstein abound in the Ivory Coast I understand). And all I have to do is reply to his email.
It's as easy as that! Perhaps I should get Fraser Nelson in on the deal. He can use the proceeds to cut taxes.
Anyway, I was idly wondering what would happen if I replied and I came across this fabulous, laugh out loud funny, exchange that took place when Will Sturgeon of Silicon.Com replied to a Nigerian email scammer.
Will began with this masterful reply: Dear Madu Frank,
Thank you very much for contacting me with this wonderful offer, it sounds almost too good to be true. It's amazing, only this morning I was saying how I could do with having a bit more money - I must be a very lucky man.
Of course I would be interested in helping, but would also be very interested to hear who recommended me, as you say you have been told that I am a "reliable" and "trustworthy" person. I assure you I am, but would like to know who I have to thank for this wonderful opportunity.
Just to clarify, you say I stand to get 30 per cent of the total money transferred - this is £6.75m, right? Wow!
I look forward to hearing from you.
Now read on.
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- Sarah Ebner in School Gate: Want to improve your child's educational chances? Then talk to them....
- Dizzy Thinks: Why I want a lobby pass *hic*
- Jocelyn Guest in The Daily Beast: Re-Casting Obama
- Stephen J. Dubner in Freakonomics: How aggressively will the new administration address global warming?
- Stuart Derbyshire in Spiked: Let’s blow away all the barriers to stem-cell science
If you are preparing for Monday's PBR, it is important that you don't miss this morning's FT splash.
The paper is headlined: Runaway borrowing to trigger tax rises
The reason I point out this story is not to reinforce the notion that we are borrowed up to the hilt. It is to inject a point into the debate on a fiscal stimulus that appears to be missing.
Borrowing will increase because there are automatic stabilisers. There will therefore be a fiscal stimulus. If the recession is very bad, then the amount of extra cash injected into the economy by the working of the stabilisers will also be very large.
If I have read it correctly, the FT story suggests that the extra borrowing caused by the recession may be as large as £30bn a year by the end of 2010/11.
What those who want a further fiscal stimulus are calling for is therefore on top of £30bn.
Time to bring on Sarah Palin and a turkey.
Head over to Across the Pond for perhaps the funniest Palin video yet.
Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, has spotted this:
Sergey Brin, one of the founders of Google confesses (min 1.27) that he - as Anderson notes even he - didn't think Wikipedia would work.
Why? Because even he underestimated the scale effects of the internet.
While we're setting out fascinating facts about Deep Throat I really feel I ought to point out that Deep Throat did not tell Bob Woodward to: Follow the money
It was a line written by William Goldman in his screenplay of All the President's Men.
Just thought you would like to know.
Why oppose state funding of political parties?
Here's one reason.
Douglas Carswell MP records that he used his communications allowance to fund a constituency newspaper that included criticism of the speaker. The piece was illustrated with a picture of Michael Martin.
Only it wasn't because the House authorities insisted that the picture be removed.
Earlier this week it was revealed that Paul Flynn MP had been instructed to remove disobliging remarks about other MPs from his website, even though some concerned members of his own party, and one described Lembit Opik as a "clown", which is simply an objective description.
The state is bound to be a far more intrusive donor than any to be found on a yacht, demanding influence for cash.
The way in which officials have intervened in these case is disgraceful. And a warning.
You might enjoy:
Daniel Finkelstein
is Chief Leader Writer of The Times and writes a weekly column. Comment Central is his rolling guide to the best opinion on the web. Click
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