I'm winding down for Christmas, doing some relevant reading but no actual writing. My partner has stopped for the holiday so we're gently getting ready to entertain on Christmas Day.

We had a walk on Saturday at 'the duckboard' aka Thursley Common. On the whole the weather hasn't been good enough to lure us out. However, I had longish walk on Wednesday over by Hascombe, long enough indeed to be stuck up Hascombe hill in the dark. I just managed to forget about it getting dark at 4 pm. The darkness wasn't absolute but under the trees there wasn't enough light to read the map by. Thankfully, I found a dry path back down to the bottom.

====================================================

Catching up with the parts of last Sunday's paper that I hadn't got around to reading when I last posted, I was struck with the Observer's strong case for some 'New deal., style investment in infrastructure. Andrew Rawnsley was advocating more spending on the railways, renewable energy and the electronic super highway.

That all sounds good - how about an orbital railway for London - but I'm not sure if even that would be enough to pull the UK out a recession lasting years. In fact, my understanding is that the New Deal may have mitigated some of the effects of the Great Depression but that it took Germany and Great Britain going to war to really restore America to prosperity.

Back in the present there do seem to some leaders with a feel for the real dangers of a serious economic slump. Dominique Strauss-Kahn was interviewed on the 'The World at 1pm' the other day and he seemed to be aware of the threat to the social order. I reckon that Gordon Brown does, too, but that some of the cabinet need educating in this connection.

Would Andrew Rawnsley have been plugging a point of view that he reckons the Prime Minister has already decided to run with? Quite likely. Why haven't we heard more about 'investing to recover'? I think the answer to that is that neither the government nor anyone else knows quite how much recovery will be needed. Commentators and economists are still trying to work out how big an effect the financial crisis will have on things like consumer spending. By next Spring, everyone should have a much clearer picture and we'll hear a lot more about a recovery programme.

I'd guess that moves to restart house building will be one plank of this programme.

As I've said before, I think we're going to find ourselves in something of a leadership vacuum for the next few years. Although Gordon Brown's reputation has shown a phoenix-like renewal, a lot of business reputations are just dust now. People aren't saying so yet but this loss of reputation is like the middle post of the washing line falling over; political reputations are going to be more vunerable, too.

Although, commentators are saying that assets haven't reached a floor and have further to fall, one hopeful aspect of the current economic problems is that the worst affected country, the United States, isn't any longer the world's most potent overseas investor. China, the Middle East and some other countries (Singapore, Japan) do still have wealth for investing. It's just that they're not going to be as respectful towards the old global elite in the West. In a few years' time we're going to be much more accustomed to non-Western icons and idols. Whether they'll be subjected to any more rigorous examination than the old ones remains to be seen.

=====================================================

This is likely my last post before Christmas so Merry Christmas to any who got this far!