Posting again after a longer than usual gap, not because I've been away; just busy.
Some kind of watershed in the recession seems to have been reached; a point when matters could move in one of several directions.Saturday's demonstration in central London captured the mood of the moment with the calls for help for those affected by the recession AND to combat global poverty AND for progress in combatting climate change. There were uglier tendencies, too, such as the calls for bankers to be burned or hung from lamp posts and the support for the window smashing at Sir Fred Goodwin's home in Edinburgh.
Politicians seem to be at their own cross roads with the talk of division between the fiscal stimulus camp and its opponents and the talk of the G20 summit being a 'damp squib'.
Presumably, we'll have to wait until Gordon Brown and Mervyn King are both out of office (and some) to find out everything that's been going on behind the scenes between the two of them. The media's coverage of the Governor of the Bank of England's 'No' (to fiscal stimulus) has left a lot of unanswered questions. Amazingly, the media seem to have made too little of the extraordinary timing of the Governor's remarks and of the possibility that the Chancellor and he may have ganged up on the Prime Minister.
while the 'ganging up' seems undeniable, there is always the possibility that Mervyn King waited until the Prime Minister was out of the country because they both knew that, while ruling out a further fiscal stimulus would be humiliating for Gordon Brown, they also knew that public expectations had to be trimmed. Once he was out of the country, at least the Prime Minister was able to get away without having to answer the Governor's case in full. Whatever, the facts about the timing, the Prime Minister must have known before last week that further fiscal stimulus ran the danger of provoking a Sterling crisis.
So what has been Mr Brown's plan? In part he seems to have been workig to weaken the effect of European opposition to fiscal stimulus. Since the French and the Germans didn't want to pay for more stimulus and much of Europe, the UK included, couldn't afford one anyway, maybe Gordon Brown was just trying to make it old hat and to prevent the Europeans from trying to make the matter more contentious than it needs to be. The end result of Europe getting bolshie about stimuli would be to make it easier for the US to become more protectionist - and there's enough danger of that.
If Gordon Brown can achieve a repeat commitment to combat protectionism together with a restructuring of the IMF along with more funding for the same to help developing countries, he'll have beaten the 'benchmark' 1933 London conference. he can't really claim the credit for it but some signs of trust on the part of China that the US won't try to inflate its way out of its huge deficit would also help.
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Gordon Brown has been leading the country on a wing and a prayer for a long time now. He's benefited enormouslyform haing 'steady' Alistair Darling as Chancellor and for the scandals affecting Jackie Smith, Tony McNulty and Lord Myners and now from the Conservative Party's divisions over Inheritance Tax and the EU. In view of the immense loss of wealth across the country as result of plummeting house prices and shrinking share portfolios, it seems odd that the Conservative should be worried that the threshold for IT isn't rising.
Lord Myner's political career has become a kind of bell wether of the changing climate. Only a year or 18 months ago his businesses with offshore holdings might have drawn some criticism but the media would have thought they were unexceptionable. I'm still inclined to think that he's one of the good guys and to cut him some slack over the Fred Goodwin pension on account of his being new to his ministerial post and having a lot on his plate at the time. He's done good work on improving the UK's financial system when he was in business and he should have a lot to offer. It's intriguing that other politicians seem to believe automatically that Sir Tom McKillop's version of events surrounding the Goodwin pension must be the correct one. Although I don't actually read the Guardian (of which Lord Myners was the boss), it seems unlikely that any of the rest of the UK's media are completely spotless when it comes to offshore funds, non-dom status etc.
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I've had no time for any long walks since last posting but have made progress on the new veg patch. found some frog spawn in the watering can the other day. I checked on the Internet about what to do with it and found a helpful thread on Mumsnet on just this topic. So yesterday, we took the watering can round to the nearest pond. When I came to carry the can, I realised that the frog was still in there with the spawn so she's been moved to the pond, too.
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We borrowed the dvd of 'The Counterfeiters' on Saturday. It's all about an ace counterfeiter, Sal Sorowitsch, imprisoned in Sachsenhausen concentration camp and made to fake pound and dollar notes. Not bad but it was a little frustrating plotting the moral dilemma of Jews assisting the Nazi war effort when the main character (a long term 'professional' counterfeiter)plays his cards so close to his chest. Also, a scene of Bank of England officials wondering where all the money is coming from would have been good.
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Having said that we're at a watershed, in just the last two days the signs have been good. UK consumer confidence rose slightly in February, apparently, there are signs that the housing market has passed its lowest point and the stock market has improved. In fact, until this week, investors seem to have been stuck in a swamp high up the mountain with huge amounts of cash surging in and out of UK bank shares almost every day.
