Good News! More Quantitative Easing!

The Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee is extending its Qualitative Easing (QE) by another £50 bn.

It does look as though the second part of our W shaped recession will not be so deep as the first part, but it is wise to battle it now, before it has its full effect. Good signs like rises in House prices, and expanding manufacturing and service sectors are welcome news, but not enough.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/aug/05/recession-uk-pulling-out

The US economy may well operate out of the recession there more readily, and so Obama was wise to hold on pumping more money into their economy when some were calling for more. America tends to be quicker, so many small businesses, stronger and more vigorous entrepreneurship.

The UK relies on trade with the world for a larger part of our economy, and the wider world will be slower to recover in most places, so we have a narrower path to tread. Part of our trade is the collapsed international finance sector.

We went into the recession with lower core inflation, which is generated in our economy by our wages and dividends rather than imported, than most countries and that continues, with wage cuts and freezes.

This remains key to our future prosperity. Tackling the National Debt is much less important, and likely to remain so.

Sir Iain Dale has taken a holiday from blogging . . .

. . and this got lost when he packed: (PS Mixed in with his Captain's titfer it seems, he found it eventually) http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2009/08/alan-sugar-tries-to-bully-quentin-letts.html#links

I know someone with a functioning Amstrad, and there seem to be Amstrad and other old computer societies still in operation - check online.

In the days when Apple in Regents St used to permit people to queue outside with their faulty Apples before opening there were usually quite a few old Macs, certainly a few 20 years or so old.

Some people look after things. Not so the media.

Letts is an habitual liar, he might better get away with it online, where the writ of the libel and slander etc laws runs less true:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technology/shanerichmond/5144547/Online_comments_are_more_like_slander_than_libel_says_judge/

No-one seems fussed whether or not statements are true, so long as they serve some propagandist's intentions.

In truth our society is still more threatened by the failure of the 24/7 News Community (LOL) - or perhaps disinterest - to distinguish between fact and opinion.

He may be a secret Amstrad fancier I suppose, unwilling to come out in public . . ???

Nice to be proven right . . .

. . . especially in what many claimed were optimistic predictions.

When the Dully Teles were predicting a decade of depression (well some were), 35% pa house price falls, parity of the £ with the Euro and $, and Mugabe levels of inflation I disagreed. (The Telegraph most likely will have deleted all my forecasts by now, so their "community members" can make them up should they want to tell a few fibs about the "socialists" . . .)

The £ is now back to $1.70, not far from the $1.70/75 I predicted as its likely average when it settles, house prices have begun to increase (Even the Inst Chartered Surveyors admit they may by the end of the year) and the fall overall is not far from the 12.5 - 17.5% I suggested over a two year period, and will be nearer that when the two years are up, and inflation/deflation are not particular problems.

We may still find the second part of the w shaped recession we seem to be on has not yet bottomed out, but it does look shallower than the first part of the W.

It is particularly encouraging that international statesmen and women, sometimes led by Brown and Darling, have acted together to prevent the worst effects of a plunge over the economic abyss, as I predicted, only the insane would oppose co-operation to prevent a 1930s style decade.

We are lucky to live in our time, for all the problems, and we stand on the shoulders of those like Keynes and Galbraith who fought to make these better times.

Tory tactics in Totnes open primary . . ?

I wonder if Tory MP blogger Douglas Carswell will publish this? (He did, Thank you Douglas)

This is a carefully calculated choice for Totnes, which is subject to boundary changes and includes parts of Torbay, where UKIP had it's best vote share in the Euro - Elections (They didn't do badly in the S Hams either):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/table/2009/jun/09/european-elections-elections-2009

There are other issues:

http://quietzapple-musing.blogspot.com/2009/08/open-primary-by-post-in-totnes.html

This was a tactical decision, and the back room boys who work for Ashcroft, who reputedly has a larger office at Tory HQ than Cameron may well have been involved in the decision to go for the primary.

It may well be a moot point whether the £40,000 initiates the campaign from the point of view of Tory expenditures, which must be kept within the legal limits and declared after the election.

I might add that this sort of populism is bogus and can become counterproductive. Elections by acclamation usually are, and Gordon Brown has suffered from that, just as Michael Howard did, both insisting that their opponents stand down, or be not nominated.

Will all those who voted "own" the result? Or did Ashcroft pay for it, and does he now own the Tory party, lock, stock and stinking barrel?

Open Primary by post in Totnes

One should congratulate Dr Sarah Wollaston GP who has won the race to become Tory Candidate in Totnes Constituency. I wonder if she will manage to change HMG's policy on marijuana as I understand she desires?

The Tories used an open selection method to promote Boris Johnson when Cameron asked him to be his standard bearer in London, where he beat London tories with no national image before being heavily promoted by the Lyin' (whoops) Evening Standard. The BBC has the current story here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8182833.stm

Totnes Conservative will have spent £40,ooo on their postal ballot, and their candidate will have been selected by the votes of Labour, Lib-Dem, Green and UKIP voters as well as, perhaps a few conservatives. Worth remembering that Anthony Steen MP, who was well liked by folk I knew in that area, was a maverick, and an untypical tory has best sort there IMHO.

This constituency must have worked out another reason why an open ballot made sense for them:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/table/2009/jun/09/european-elections-elections-2009

Yep, UKIP may win there if they can get their act together . . . (South Hams includes Totnes the town, and the constituency is redrawn: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totnes_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Boundaries )

The Tory wiseacres there no doubt wisely judged that the new boundaries, taking in parts of Torbay, will be a difficult one for them, their strategy looks well founded in practice.

Utterly dishonest and scunnerish, typical tory - eh?

I complained, impeded by their difficulties . . .

Tomasz Schafernaker just (on 2/9/09, which your complaints engine will not accept) told us we might want to get "that barbecue" out.

Now either he suggests that we have more than one apiece, or he is unaware of the word "your" or this is yet another petty over dramatisation of the
weather report, as common elsewhere.

Over uses of "that" and "those" are commonly made to suggest sycophancy, or precocity/preciousness.

Obviously another weather presenter has set the standard for all this, and there are others in other areas who have led the way.

There is far too much of it, kindly desist.

As you see below I am not permitted to reveal their reply. I am not ashamed of my "comment" which they claim will be circulated high and low at the BBC, but their reply is on the secret list. If it was circulated with my complaint everything would be different.

And the BBC would be a merrier place.

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I wish to complain . . .

I have had to complain about the BBC complaints cock-up, for which there is yet another complaints procedure. This one advises that there are so many complaints they cannot reply to my complaint.

I recall a Monty Python lady "Complain? We 'ad to complain about complaining . . !!!" (Or is that my imagination?)

"I'll tell you what I'll do fer you . . . I'll do nothing . . . But you'll have to wait . " Roy Kinnear as gatekeeper in Jonathan Miller's BBC TV version of Alice.

The Spirit of the Beeb, always new comedy in action.