A longer than normal gap in posting. Even homeworkers are sometimes affected by the weather and I’ve been busy on my latest project. Here the snow arrived early on Monday and hung around all week but Monday was the day of maximum disruption. The striking thing about the news coverage was the juxtaposition of a serious lack hard information about transport and an enormous amount of complaining and blaming about the lack of foresight etc.. The media seem to play us all for a load of suckers; whatever’s going on the British public will love to have somebody to blame (they think).

I guess the high profile parts of the banking industry were pleased and relieved to be able to share their unpopularity with local authority officials and head teachers. Although, now the storm over bankers’ bonuses is gathering power, they may need some further real storms to give them the cover they need.

This taste for blaming is no good for blogging. Aiming shots at specific wrongs is fine but when we're a deeper hole, it doesn't work to just crank up the volume criticism.

In fact, some of the UK banks’ shares did quite well last week. Lloyds bank shares are worth more than £1 each and even RBS shares are worth almost 25 pence. Reading some investment commentators – as I do – there’s also been quite a lot of talk about the way in which the stock market acts as a ‘leading indicator’ for the economy. The theory is that the stock market will start to rise about, say, nine months before the economy as a whole starts growing again. Without wishing to pour cold water on any green shoots of hopefulness, I think there could be some wishful thinking here. Stock market investors aren’t as frightened as they were back in October and November; they’re not sure if they should be scared or sanguine about the market now. In those circumstances, it’s really comforting to think that a bit of a stock market recovery will be followed sometime around next Christmas and New Year by brighter news about the economy (causing another rise in share prices and so on). But the investor may be making too much of the link. Although some GDP growth may help to bed down a recovery in the stock market, the stock market can’t make the economy grow and the economic recovery might take years to recover and that could make the stock market fall back again.

It doesn’t look as if everything is going to go back to the way it was that easily. Of course, talking of getting back to where we were may not be the right way to think about the current situation. So ‘returning to normal’ is too small an idea for the predicament that we’re in.

I heard a quote that sums up a lot to me but although I think the original words were President Roosevelt’s (FDR), I’m not sure. The quote goes something like this: “What America is able to do, America can afford to do.” It may have been “What Americans can do,…..”. Anyway, the point is that the quote sums up just the right attitude to endeavour and evaluating national life that’s needed nowadays. This kind of endeavour means that a country can make or trade for everything it needs, that the common good is furthered and that each generation makes the progress that’s needed for the next to prosper. That’s what America or the UK or any other country can afford to do and can’t afford not to do.

On this measure, it seems as if the Conservative Party’s ideas about the government budget are too short-sighted. Balancing the budget is only a means to an end and right now it looks as if it might be harmful – but not to sufficient numbers of potential Conservative voters to make the party’s leaders rethink the policy. Equally, the government has a reputation for wastefulness to overcome and it needs to be careful that there’s no Sterling crisis.

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I’ve had one good walk in the last 10 days. Yesterday I walked on Royal, Bagmoor, Ockley and Guinea Commons in the remains of the snow. Although I recognised where I was, there was just enough snow to make it difficult to work out where the paths went. The best part of the walk was out from under the trees on the edge of Ockley Common, looking up towards the Devil’s Punchbowl with a very clear sky. The Met Office is 60 per cent certain of heavy rain tomorrow but no more snow this far south.

I’ve been reading ‘Time’s Witness’ by Michael Malone. It’s about 500 pages long so it’s taking a while but I like it. The subject is a plot involving the murder of one (black) man and the retrial of his brother, who’s on death row; sort of ‘To Kill A Mocking Bird’ (for adults) crossed with John Grisham’s ‘The Client’.

We’ve started planning a holiday. We’d like to go back to Coll but are also considering Barra in the Outer Hebrides (which we’ve not visited before).

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i see that blog.co.uk is no longer carrying adverts. I don't particularly mind as some of them weren't very appropriate. However, I hope blog.co.uk aren't too adversely affected.