Financial news

The New York stock exchange is presently unperturbed by the possibility of the U.S., the biggest economy on Earth, defaulting on its debts. Investors are said to be confident and this is reflected in the Dow Jones index. Everybody is happy. More follows....................

Olympics special

It is now only one year until the opening ceremnony of the London Olympics which are exactly one year away in a year's time this time next year. Thought you ought to know this.

Adjust William

Enoch Powell famously said that all political careers end in failure. If the old buzzard was still with us, I can imagine a post-script noting that many now begin so. It is always dangerous to look back with too much uncritical fondness at political figures from the recent, readily recalled past, especially so with the likes of dear old Enoch, who was a bit of a card at times, but this shouldn’t bar us from appreciating the techniques they used and the skill with which complex ideas were distilled and transmitted in finely crafted paragraphs. The sheer vapidity of the vast bulk of political debate at U.K. level today is starkly highlighted when listening to some of the acknowledged masters of the post war era. Sceptics can look to the early days of televised parliament for positive identification of that now almost extinct species. A few linger, but they are old, elusive and seldom heard.

It should be a matter of national regret that the age of the great parliamentarian has gone and that public speakers of Powell’s calibre are not around to tears strips off the gormless lobby fodder now clogging Westminster’s benches. The role has now become so homogenised and commodified, we now have standard issue politicians: a 2/2 from Oxbridge in Politics, Philosophy and Economics with work experience as an adviser to somebody slightly further up the same hermetically sealed food chain is now widely considered to be sufficient qualification to run the country. Miliband, Cameron and their respective tribes clearly accept this orthodoxy and the frightening thing is that nobody seems to be challenging it except a few wizened old refusniks forever banished to the political hinterlands. It suits the markets, mind, so nothing worry about..........

Spot the self-referring paradox: Number 2651

From the BBC News website today:

Nick Martin

writes on our Facebook wall "At least the Norwegians have had the sense to try this guy behind closed doors and not give him the publicity he craves".