Audi slideshow - "Britain From The Air" on the BBC here. Fantastic.

Hundreds of playground schemes mothballed

Here.

My initial reaction - Gove is a fanatic.

Time will tell.

1066 and all those baby names. Here.

Living without a stomach. Here.

15 Mind Blowing Facts About Wealth And Inequality In America

Here.

Is inactivity a major cause of obesity or is it more like obesity causes inactivity.

A study finds for the latter, and the important thing is to have an appropriate diet.

Here.

Cost of living.

Here.

And here.

From 'This Is Money'.

An interview with William White. He is supposed to have warned of a financial crisis back in 2003.

An interview with him here. He talks about whether anything has actually changed.

A really good 'economy tracker' here from the BBC.

Row over Alastair Campbell on BBC Question Time panel

What's the difference between being lonely and a loner?

In graphics: Eurozone in crisis

Global recession timeline. Here.

Queen opens Parliament. Bills here.

Cameron's firsts et of constitutional changes.

Fixed terms and a 55% threshold for a dissolution of parliament. On the BBC here.

This today as Cameron vists Scotland, in his first week as Premier and the start of his 'respect' approach to the Union.

See my post re Cameron and the union with Scotland here to compare.

From the BBC here, a graph from Ipsos Mori.

(Click on graph to enlarge.)

Hava Nagilah, What Is It? from Katahdin Productions on Vimeo.

From the BBC's website. A set of pictures of Gordon Brown's last hours in Downing Street. Pictures here. And a short film clip here.

And here, the new cabinet arrives.

A quote from Dave Winer, here:

Corporations rise from entrepreneurship, get established, defend their turf, and give way to new corporations that rise from entrepreneurship, etc etc.

Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, IBM, DEC, Compaq, HP, Lotus, Sun, Netscape, Google, Twitter. Over the years they come and go, and they never solve problems. They die off and the next generation of tech companies solve them.

Full text of LibCon coalition agreement. Here.

Seen this on the BBC:

A bold statement - almost - from Conservative blogger Iain Dale. He suggests "the era of spin", if not dead, might at least be a much weakened beast. "I'm not saying it's over, but I don't think we're going to get Mandelson/Campbell again."

Really!

We'll see about that.

Newspaper endorsements, general election eve 2010. From here.

Daily Mail: “Why we must vote DECISIVELY to stop Britain walking into disaster … and give the Tories their chance.”
Sun: Alongside a picture of topless page-three girls: “Sixteen Page 3 girls in all their glory represent the very image of freedom in this country. But if Labour or the Lib Dems win the election, this could be the last time they are allowed to pose together.”
Independent: “There is a strong case for progressively minded voters to lend their support to the Liberal Democrats wherever there is a clear opportunity for that party to win.”
Daily Telegraph – Conservatives
Sunday Telegraph – Conservatives
Daily Express – Conservatives
News of the World – Conservatives
Guardian – Liberal Democrats
Times – Conservatives
Sunday Times – Conservative
Economist – Conservatives
Independent on Sunday – Liberal Democrats
Observer – Liberal Democrats
Mail on Sunday – Conservatives
Financial Times – Conservatives
Mirror – Labour, but urging tactical voting for Lib Dems

Some great election graphs here

The approximate amount of energy used for a keystroke.

This post on a Google blog says that changing the UK Google Mail domain name from 'googlemail' to 'gmail' will:

...save approximately 60 million keystrokes a day. At about 217 microjoules per keystroke, that's about the energy of 20 bonbons saved every day!

A Tory nightmare scenario. Andrew Sullivan here.

A great comment from John Prescott:

Former Deputy PM John Prescott has some tongue-in-cheek words of sympathy for the night-workers who have met David Cameron on his marathon pre-polling trip around Britain. He tweets: "It's hard enough working nights but to have someone repeatedly shouting 'change' at you must get on your nerves!"

( from the BBC)

Enough sleep is important. Very. But not too much.

Here.

Who pays for weddings and what presents do newlyweds want? Here.

Michael Gove in an interview re 'The Big Society', here on the Today program.

Not impressed. Very wooly. Will not stand the test of time. Makes me rather apprehensive of a Conservative overall majority.

And note my post here.

I agree with Johnathan Freedland's conclusions re the 3rd and last debate of the 2010 election. Here.

Who supports the LibDems?

Benedict Brogan on Gillian Duffy in The Telegraph - here.

Tory MP's went to which schools?

Answer is here.

Nearly 80% of Conservative MPs went to a private or grammar but around 85% of British children attend a comprehensive school, but only 14% of Conservative MPs attended a comprehensive.

Yes, the data is out-of-date but will there be a significant change in these stats after the new incoming Tories take their seats in a few weeks time?

Is it a prob? Not sure - but it certainly raises questions. Are the Tories even equipped to understand the rest of us?

A post I wrote on a now deleted blog, dated 06 May 2008:

Some of the items in this list exemplify well, how patronage works in a modern context, and how potential beneficiaries of this patronage seek to capitalise from it.

A post I wrote on a now deleted blog, dated 24 April 2008:

The latest problems with the abolition of the 10p tax band.

My thoughts:

Firstly, I think as many people as possible should pay some tax. Paying tax is something that makes a person feel part of the society he is paying into. This is a good thing. So even if a person pays a small amount of tax it benefits both the payer and society.

Secondly, it is much better that people keep what they earn than paying tax and then getting it back as a benefit or tax credit.

That said, I fail to understand the logic of abolishing the 10p tax rate.

A post I wrote on a now deleted blog, dated 08 May 2008:

I think last week's big losses for Labour in the council elections, mark the end of over a decade of tax rises for the middle classes.

Labour have done great things, but they have mostly paid for it by putting up taxes that have fallen on those that have a middling income (in a variety of ways; 'stealth taxes'?) . We have now come to the end of this process. From hence on the task of government will be to manage this tax take for the benefit of the country.

It is noteworthy that the Conservatives do not promise to make big tax cuts. The big change since the Thatcher and Major years is that people have come to accept that the only way to pay for acceptable public services is through taxation. People want public services and to some extent they are ready to pay for it. But there is a limit - and people are now saying that government are taking enough - the challange now is to spend it wisely.

The battle over the next two years will be about which party has the best ideas for spending the countries tax take. This might well be difficult for Labour. Yes Labour have achieved many things in power - and I would give them the credit for teaching the public that taxation is not all bad - but are they best placed to spend our money efficiently?

If the Conservatives have accepted the need for public services and also accept that good public services means taxation for those on middling income, would they not be the best people to manage this money in the most business like way?

I think Labour might have a difficult time proving that they can do a better job of it.

In a short follow-up post, dated 12 May 2008 I wrote:

I enjoyed the Bagehot column in The Economist this weekend, as it confirms a point that I made in my last post: that political debate has now moved leftwards onto New Labour territory.

In summary; many of the innovations introduced by New Labour are now part of the accepted political landscape. The Conservatives are coming to the political discourse with ideas which are by their very nature 'post' New Labour.

On 28 April 2008, I posted:

Gordon Brown has over the last few years given a lot of help to the groups he considers the 'deserving poor' i.e. parents with children (hard working families) and pensioners. The problem with this is that somebody is going to have to to pay for it- drumrole - hard working people (singles and couples) who don't have children.

At some point this group was always going to get rather upset, why should they get little help but still see so much of their taxes being handed out to people who have chosen to have children?

I think the largesse to this selected groups of people is coming to an end; the 10p tax debacle is evidence of that - next time everybody might be included. Hooray!

The following, is a post I wrote on a blog that I have since deleted, dated 24/12/2007:

Several weeks back David Cameron was in Scotland, and gave a short speech in which he argued for the continuation of the 300 year old Union of England & Scotland and against Scottish Independence. (For a similar speech he made it in 2006 see here.)

I quote a couple of sentences from the speech which, even within their context, I find rather troublesome.

In the last sentence of his introduction, he says:

• "We must confront and defeat the ugly stain of separatism seeping through the Union flag."

and towards the end of the speech, we get:

• "So let us scrub out the stain of separatism that is starting to disfigure our land"

He also talks about a "narrow English nationalism" and a "coarse and casual nationalism" when referring to English nationalism.

I think it is very wrong to use this kind of language. There is nothing wrong with debating these subjects. It is more than legitimate to discuss Scottish Independence, as it is more than legitimate to discuss issues of English nationalism. Cameron should not be making comments that make people feel ashamed about discussing issues about which there is nothing to be ashamed about. It also, I am saddened to say, exposes Cameron's underlying position towards this debate. Rather than cool-headed and objective, as he would have us believe, it is an emotional and subjective petty nationalism. Else there is no place describing an opposing position as 'an ugly stain' that needs to be 'confronted and defeated'.

In a subsequent follow-up post, dated 31/12/2007, I wrote the following:

I refer back to my last post. I see it like this:

• A case can be made for keeping the constituent parts of the UK intact as part of The Union of The United Kingdom and Northern Island.

• A case can be made for Scottish Independence.

• A case can be made for Welsh Independence.

• A case can be made for a more overt English Nationalism and English Independence.

• A case can be made for the union of both parts of the island Ireland.

• A case can be made for regionalism within England.

This list can go on.

The point is that I read and hear many a good argument that make a good case for these positions and more. It is right to debate these issues - and politicians should not scare us into shutting-up.

On 18/12/2007, I posted the following:

Like everything else, constitutions do not stand still. They evolve; at times a little slower and at times a little faster.

There is no reason why the unwritten British Constitution should be exempt from this rule and indeed as one would expect, it is constantly changing. One only needs to take a quick glance at it's history since Gladstone and the Home Rule debates to see this.

The cauldron of British Constitutional matters continues to sit - as it has done for a thousand years, sometimes simmering and sometimes boiling but never frozen solid - firmly in place on her burner. Today we have of course the constant question of Britain's relationship vis-a-vis the European Union, but also debates surrounding The English Question, The West Lothian Question, regional devolution, Scottish Independence, Cornish devolution, upgrading the Welsh Assembly to a parliament - and the list goes on.

These subjects and more, are debated on the blogsphere; which I think is exactly what should be happening.

I just saw a quote here:

"... England is the last colony of the British Empire?"

I think it's a great conceptualisation of the English question.

X-37B military spaceplane launches from Cape Canaveral Interesting. A semi secret USA military space program. The craft, of which I have not heard before, blasted off into space just after midnight today.

Here

Is this something we are going to hear a lot of in future years?

Will this post from YouGov's Peter Kellner, discussing the odds of an outright LibDem win on May 05 2010, be seen as historic?

Time will tell.

There are vulnerable people and poverty all over the place. Stories like this do happen.

Eruption of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajokull

See here & here.

• Report with volcano in background. Here.
• From craters edge. Here.
• Why is it a problem? Here.

American federal taxes 2010 - are spent thus:



while state taxes are spent thus:

Letter from seventy seven economists to The Times attacking the Conservative's policy of making six billion pounds worth of savings/cuts.

Here.

I never quite understand what people mean when they claim that British politics is becoming 'Presidential'. My impressions are that 'strong' Prime Ministers were always like that.

Andrew Blick & George Jones have just written a new book about 'the development, nature and power of the office of the British Prime Minister'. In a post here, they confirm that claims of creeping presidentiality are exaggerated.

http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/

A nice government 'spendometer' here.

BBC's poll tracker.

In his response to Labour's election manifesto, the business editor of the BBC says that 'Labour has gone Cold on the Market'.

It does seem that Labour is adopting an increasingly interventionist approach. Is this a return to 'Old Labour' ideologies?

This from the Institue of Fical Studies reacting to the Lib Dems election announcements on taxation.

The LibDems have responded with this:

"Rather than making people fill out complex forms to get benefits only to tax them through the nose, Liberal Democrats believe people on low and middle incomes should simply be allowed to keep more of their own money." That's the Lib Dem response to criticism by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. The IFS said their claims on tax ignored the effect of the benefits system in helping the UK's poorest, but the party said the think tank's analysis only "serves to further highlight the absurd tax and benefits system created by Gordon Brown".

I have not studied this issue enough, but my initial feeling is how can the LibDems position on this be the wrong one?

Found this on the BBC election site:

... Lyzzle from Portsmouth suggests that it is time "that the duty charge within products like petrol are itemised on each bill, like VAT..."

I agree strongly. It would be an important step to tax transparency and consequently tax accountability. People would be stimulated to investigate how taxation affects their lives. Politicians would be forced to make a very good case to persuade people that a tax is an appropriate one.

Budget 2010 in Graphics

Here. From the Treasury website.

Money makes you happy (if your friends have less)

What they said when I was a teenager. Not.

Lie-in for teenagers has positive results

This is the story that unveils the true colours of the Tory attitude to public services.

They public will not be persuaded that it is the way to go. The Tories, even if they do win will never be able to implement it. It won't happen.

If Cameron wouldn't pretend he is something that he is not, he wouldn't have to suffer the indignity of these sorts of You Tube's.

“Someone once said ‘Show me a soldier who has made no mistakes and I’ll show you a soldier who has won no battles’.”

Gordon Brown in a speech @ Reuters HQ March 10 2010 when asked if he had regrets.

Andrew Sullivan posts 'The Death of Conservatism' here.

Quote from Warren Buffets annual letter to shareholder of Berkshire Hathaway INC:

It’s my job to keep Berkshire far away from such problems. Charlie and I believe that a CEO must not delegate risk control. It’s simply too important. At Berkshire, I both initiate and monitor every derivatives

contract on our books, with the exception of operations-related contracts at a few of our subsidiaries, such as MidAmerican, and the minor runoff contracts at General Re. If Berkshire ever gets in trouble, it will be my fault.

It will not be because of misjudgments made by a Risk Committee or Chief Risk Officer.

In my view a board of directors of a huge financial institution is derelict if it does not insist that its CEO bear full responsibility for risk control. If he’s incapable of handling that job, he should look for other employment. And if he fails at it – with the government thereupon required to step in with funds or guarantees – the financial consequences for him and his board should be severe. It has not been shareholders who have botched the operations of some of our country’s largest financial institutions. Yet they have borne the burden, with 90% or more of the value of their holdings wiped out in most cases of failure. Collectively, they have lost more than $500 billion in just the four largest financial fiascos of the last two years. To say these owners have been “bailed-out” is to make a mockery of the term. The CEOs and directors of the failed companies, however, have largely gone unscathed. Their fortunes may have been diminished by the disasters they oversaw, but they still live in grand style. It is the behavior of these CEOs and directors that needs to be changed: If their institutions and the country are harmed by their recklessness, they should pay a heavy price – one not reimbursable by the companies they’ve damaged nor by insurance. CEOs and, in many cases, directors have long benefitted from oversized financial carrots; some meaningful sticks now need to be part of their employment picture as well.

Vince Cable comments here.

I don't see any suggestions in his article for a better way of doing things.

Disappointing.

Haaretz interviews Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu at the start of his second year as Prime Minister.

Three letters by eighty economists arguing over the question of how soon to begin a fiscal response to the UK's budget deficit: (subscription might be needed to see the two letters in the FT)

1. Sunday Times - start now.
2. Financial Times 1 - wait till recovery has time to entrench.
3. Financial Times 2 - wait till recovery has time to entrench.

And, a response by Mr Brown to the letters here.

UK finances deteriorate further.

The source of the figures is the Office of National Statistics. The relevant report is listed on this page.

These figures are bad, possibly even ghastly (as the BBC calls them). Jan should really be a good month for Public Sector Net Borrowing Requirement (PSNBR); by statute several types of taxes are collected. Analysts were expecting debt repayment not increased borrowing.

Are we as a country living beyond our means? I await the treasuries interpretation.

Unemployment. A lagging consequence of recession as per usual.

Read about it here, in this somewhat contradictory article.

This is the sort of story that makes one despair about politics. Housing Minister John Healey, on a BBC phone-in, tells the presenter that for some people, 'having their home repossessed can be the best option'. Listen to a clip of his remarks here. I think you will agree that they are said with a sensitivity to the suffering that repossession undoubtedly cause those who are losing their homes.

The Conservatives are making mischief. Read their comments.

John Healey is absolutely right. Repossessions are part of our system and sometimes houses will have to repossessed. Are Conservatives really saying that houses should never be repossessed? Are they suddenly not so keen on the market economy.

The important figures for me are those that show that far fewer homes have been repossessed in the current recession than were repossessed in the recessions of the Conservative years.

I have just read the following on the BBC:

"EU leaders have reached a deal on helping Greece tackle its debt crisis, EU President Herman Van Rompuy says.

He gave no further details, but all 27 EU leaders are now set to discuss it."

Isn't the order of things in the above quote, agreement followed by discussion, just a little back to front?

BBC News - EU deal 'agreed' on Greece debt woes

Social Services - A Good Result

The number of violent deaths among children in England and Wales has fallen by almost 40% since 1974.

Better monitoring by social workers and improved liaison between health visitors, paediatricians, GPs and police had led to the drop, it said.

The US and Germany had the highest violent death rates, the study found.

Read more here.

Interventions by good social services works. Complicated societies such as the ones we live in must have it - else we would have many more deaths.

Potholes Caused By The Big Freeze

When driving around one notices new potholes everywhere. The flags in my front garden have moved slightly.

How Much Do We Have to Spend

Here.

Tragedy of Joblessness

Here.

Beware a Thickening Girth

Read about it here.