Ripping up the credit-card, along with its analogy

It’s big disappointment time at Redfellow Hovel.

The Lady in his Life and Malcolm had been looking forward to the Cameron “pay off your debts” thing. So simple. So trite.

Paul Waugh, at politicshome, explains what happened:

Well, it lasted a full 13 hours, but in the end Team Cameron have seen sense. The PM’s putative speech line urging the public to pay off their credit card bills has been royally dumped.

The original section read like this:

“The only way out of a debt crisis is to deal with your debts. That means households – all of us – paying off the credit card and store card bills.”

The new line will read:

“The only way out of a debt crisis is to deal with your debts. That’s why households are paying down their credit card and store card bills.”

So, while there will be no hint of a Plan B for the economy, there’s clearly a Plan B for the speech.

That came out as:

When you’re in a debt crisis, some of the normal things that government can do, to deal with a normal recession, like borrowing to cut taxes or increase spending – these things won’t work because they lead to more debt, which would make the crisis worse.

Why? Because it risks higher interest rates, less confidence and the threat of even higher taxes in future. The only way out of a debt crisis is to deal with your debts. That’s why households are paying down their credit card and store card bills. It means banks getting their books in order. And it means governments – all over the world – cutting spending and living within their means.

Except, well, it means two things:

• First that Sally Bercow was correct in seeing what governments – all over the world – cutting spending would be doing  to the international merchants of death (and for which she took stick from the unenlighted):

Just seen news about BAE axing 3000 jobs. Awful 4 those concerned but surely fact that weapons sales are slowing down is a *good* thing, no?

• Second, it still doesn’t get Dave out of the tunnel and running for the trees.

For, as Waugh notes, and as Malcolm was saying six months ago, the whole Osborne Wirtschaftswunder is predicated to private debt increasing in step with the decline in public sector borrowing. Otherwise, where does the demand come from? Particularly so when export markets are not so much drying up as desiccating.

Or as the Guardian’s Toby Helm and Daniel Boffey put it:

The Office for Budget Responsibility has raised its prediction of total household debt in 2015 by a staggering £303bn since late last year, in the belief that families and individuals will respond to straitened times by extra borrowing. Average household debt based on the OBR figures is forecast to rise to £77,309 by 2015, rather than the £66,291 under previous projections.

Economists say the figures show that George Osborne’s drive to slash the public deficit and his predictions on growth are based on assumptions that debt will switch from the government’s books to private households – undermining his claims to be a debt-slashing chancellor.

One demographic, the wannabe undergraduates, will be looking ruefully at Cameron’s belief that personal debt is being reduced:

The average predicted debt on leaving university for UK students is £26,100 for those starting in 2011, rising to £53,400 for 2012 entrants.

For students in England, the projected average is £59,100, with the difference largely due to the fact that Scottish students do not have to pay tuition fees and increases for Welsh students’ will be covered by government subsidies.

The prediction assumes average tuition fees in England of £8,630 per year.

This takes into account of bursaries and fee waivers already announced …

Meanwhile Fraser Nelson, at the Spectator, has a nicely illustrated-with-graphs piece which seems to get at least half — inevitably the wrong half — of the story:

The Prime Minister was right: it is unfair. Debt is nothing more than delayed taxation. To saddle the next generation with billions upon billions of debt is not just an economic failure, but a moral failure. The public is doing its bit. Government: not so much. Cameron realizes this, I think, which is why he has changed the line in his speech. “The only way out of a debt crisis is to deal with your debts,” he says. “That’s why households are paying down their credit cards.” He’s right: people are. The government is the problem.

Indeed!

The consumption is not coming from the public sector, either here or from those governments – all over the world – cutting spending.

Our domestic general public are, in that nice Nelsonian word, “deleveraging”.

So — Dave, Gids, Fraser and all — for your next questions.

How many extra Duchy Originals have to flood into the Chinese and Indian markets? Are the Bolivians up for Stella McCartney frocks? Will the Saudis ever take to Scotch whisky?

Because, if not, things look distinctly ropey round these parts. Including your re-election in 2015.

“It must be true — it’s in the papers!”

Thus Malcolm’s dear old Dad in sardonic mood.

A likely story

Malcolm knew the late Michael Ward in the late ’60s, early ’70s, on Havering Borough Council. Ward had a framed “pull” of the Peterborough Evening Telegraph, from the 1966 General Election, announcing that he had been won the seat on the umpteenth recount.

Alas! In that 1966 General Election Michael lost to Harmar Nicholls by three votes on the eighth recount.

The Evening Telegraph, running against a deadline, had prudently prepared two front pages. And, along with Ward’s, the paper’s dignity and decency were preserved..

An unlikely story

One or two screen-hoggers (notably Malcolm Coles) watched as the Daily Mail jumped the gun on the Amanda Knox acquittal.

Were we being generous — but let us remember this is the Daily Mail — someone misinterpreted the initial judicial ruling that Knox was guilty of libel. That earned Knox a sentence of three years, a convenient upgrade from the earlier one-year sentence, and conveniently expired. After all, it goes some way to covering the blushes of the whole Italian crime-and-punishment industry.

A cock-and-bull story

So: this went up on the Mail web-site:

Whoops!

Where it becomes unforgiveable is what followed:

As Knox realized the enormity of what judge Hellman was saying she sank into her chair sobbing uncontrollably while her family and friends hugged each other in tears.

A few feet away Meredith’s mother Arline, her sister Stephanie and brother Lyle, who had flown in especially for the verdict remained expressionless, staring straight ahead, glancing over just once at the distraught Knox family.

Prosecutors were delighted with the verdict and said that ‘justice has been done’ although they said on a ‘human factor it was sad two young people would be spending years in jail’.

Following the verdict Knox and Sollecito were taken out of court escorted by prison guards and into a waiting van which took her back to her cell at Capanne jail near Perugia and him to Terni jail, 60 miles away.

Both will be put on a suicide watch for the next few days as psychological assessments are made on each of them but this is usual practice for long term prisoners.

All of which is sheer invention, invented quotation, the full fiction of “colour” details.

Malcolm Coles adds that The Sun, Sky News and The Guardian all went down the same wrong turn: only the Mail, though, produced the full fictive farrago.

There’s a personal spat going on between Nick Pisa (the by-lined writer of that Mail piece) and Tim Ireland. Pisa, who it seems is not a Mail staffer, has form on this one: he was the onlie true begetter of the whole “Foxy Knoxy” meme. The official Mail line retailed to Ireland there is informative:

The quotes were obtained from various parties in the event of either a guilty or not guilty verdict.

Presumably the Mail also has a crystal ball to foretell facial expressions.

An up-dated story

Look for any of this in today’s London press, and you will be severely disappointed. Dog does not nip at dog.

Elsewhere, the Irish Times is happy to take more than a sly nip:

THE DAILY Mail fabricated a news report on the end of the Amanda Knox trial.

Within seconds of the judge starting to announce the verdict, broadcast live on satellite television, the newspaper’s website, dailymail.co.uk, published a report headlined “Guilty: Amanda Knox looks stunned as appeal against murder conviction is rejected”.

But the newspaper went further than just having two reports ready to hand, each based on one of two possible outcomes – Knox’s appeal being rejected or upheld – and publishing the wrong one in error.

By opting for the appeal being rejected, the paper published a wholly invented account of what happened next.

The Washington Post snorted derisively:

… a few British publications made the error of publishing the news that Knox was guilty moments before she was set free.

The Daily Mail declared her guilt in a story complete with descriptions of how Knox appeared when she heard the verdict: “Amanda Knox looked stunned this evening after she dramatically lost her prison appeal against her murder conviction.”

Joel Gunter, at jouralism.co.uk,  is able to finish his account of the shambles with another most telling and shaming one-liner:

Associated Newspapers, publisher of the Daily Mail, had not responded to a request for comment at the time of writing.

Cheers! but no national stereotypes, please

Courtesy of the The Irish Times:

We hear of the formidable licensee (no sexism here, either) of the Red, White and Blue pub in Portsmouth (well, actually, Southsea),  who won her famous victory against the evil Murdoch empire. She is:

anEnglish pub landlady, Karen Murphy, [who] was fined for screening live English Premier League matches via a Greek pay-TV decoder. She appealed to the European Court of Justice, which yesterday found in her favour. It found that banning the import, sale or use of foreign decoder cards was “contrary to the freedom to provide services, and cannot be justified”.

Further on in the same report we have a comment from:

The chief executive of the Licensed Vintners’ Association, Donall O’Keeffe.

One fears that a pattern may be developing here. Or perhaps Malcolm’s mind is nudged by a local paper’s review of what was then one of Malcolm’s favourite resorts:

Whenever you come across even a half-way decently-run pub, you can be sure there’s an Irishman behind it somewhere.

In that case there was, and — coincidentally — his name was O’Keefe.

Figs of thistles?

That’s the Gospel of Matthew, 7, 16:

Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

So, let’s pick through the thistles of Rod Liddle’s recent oeuvre:

• First up, in The Spectator for 1st October:

There is something attractive about Harriet Harman’s proposal that the leader of the Labour party must, by law, be a lesbian. It is only in the last couple of years that I have been able to accept that lesbians exist at all, so it will be doubly exciting for me to watch this sort of person lead the political party of which I am a member. According to Harriet, if no lesbians are available to lead Labour, the party should choose from a shortlist of endangered woodland creatures, such as pine martens or crossbills, so as to raise their profile among the wider population and ensure that their views are represented at the highest level. I have my doubts that a crossbill could carry the thing off, frankly, and I fear that their strange beaks would be a constant source of amusement for the tabloid press.

That appears, counter-intuitively, under the headline Don’t blame immigrants for immigration – blame Ed Miliband. Even more confusing and inconsequential, Liddle goes on to define Miliband as “racist”.

• Then, in the Sunday Times this week:

The predictable decline of the lesser spotted lesbian

The country is not quite as our liberal Establishment wishes it to be — there are far fewer lesbians and far more Christians than it professes

Where have all the lesbians gone? There used to be millions of them around, cheerfully going about their exotic Sapphic business, causing no harm to anyone — and now they are gone.

Millions of sometimes rather gruffly spoken ladies, all disappeared.

The gay pressure groups had suggested that between 7% and 12% of the British population is gay or lesbian — which would be about 6m people, with an equal split between the two.

However, new figures out from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggest that the number of lesbians in Britain has fallen to a record low of 0.6% of the population, or about 350,000 people — a rate of decline comparable to that of the red squirrel.

Perhaps, like the red squirrel, the lesbians are all hiding in forests in Northumberland, somewhere near the famous Kielder forest. A sanctuary has been set up to preserve them, near Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire, but, of course, they are having certain difficulties with a breeding programme.

A real prick

By this stage it might be time for sending the flapping white coats to restrain the poor unfortunate Liddle— either because he obviously has a monomania, or to prevent (as can be seen about) plagiarizing himself. Surely, Malcolm is not alone of the readership of both periodicals to notice the heavy overlap (or the shortage) of ideas — and hence this feeling of being sold short measure.

Psychiatrics may be the more logical explanation. For, only a fortnight previously, the Spectator readers had Liddle’s observations that the Tory band could be detoxified with more stuff like:

the future Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, with a black whore on his lap and three kilos of gak up his left nostril, allegedly.

From that same article we learn that Liddle’s LSE career was somewhat coloured and colourful:

When I was at university, only a few years before Dave ’n’ George, all the Tories took cocaine. The comparatively sensible left-wingers were rarely seen without spliffs and the anarchists and members of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) favoured amphetamine sulphate. The politically non-aligned went for ecstasy.

All Malcolm, at TCD in the early ’60s, can admit are alcohol- and intellect-fuelled romps. Some of the mental-stimulus experienced at the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth may have come from weekly sessions with The Spectator, then far more staid under the editorship of Iain Macleod. How things, especially that presently louche, loose and leery journal, do change.

A fig for Liddle!

Now, if Malcolm were to bring all these notions together — the sexual shenanigans for which the contemporary Spectator is well-famed, the self-robbery, the triviality, the excess, and even the metaphorical fig — it might look something like Act I, scene iii of The Merry Wives of Windsor:

NYM: He was gotten in drink: is not the humour conceited?
FALSTAFF: I am glad I am so acquit of this tinderbox: his thefts were too open; his filching was like an unskilful singer; he kept not time.
NYM: The good humour is to steal at a minute’s rest.
PISTOL: ‘Convey,’ the wise it call. ‘Steal!’ foh! a fico for the phrase!
FALSTAFF : Well, sirs, I am almost out at heels.
PISTOL: Why, then, let kibes ensue.
FALSTAFF: There is no remedy; I must cony-catch; I must shift.

Kibes? They’re chilblains, especially on the heels. And Falstaff has just said he is short of the readies, almost out at heels. Rather like Mr Osborne (see above), whose economic management has ensured UK growth of a magnificent 0.1% over the last twelve months.

Incidentally, the Oxford English Dictionary seems reluctant to explain why the second meaning for the noun fig is Obs(cene):

A contemptuous gesture which consisted in thrusting the thumb between two of the closed fingers or into the mouth. Also, fig of Spain, and to give (a person) the fig .

So work it out for yourself. Or go to Alexander Dyce’s Glossary for help.

A nice legal point

Two major Sunday broadsheets feature the same guy.

In one story, going back two decades, he is a young Oxford student:

comatose on the lawn, being tended to by a butler who was applying cold towels to his forehead, trying to bring him round.

In the other, he has magnified his investment seven-fold — to the tune of a £95 million personal profit — by ripping off the energy resources and the sweat-and-blood labour of a struggling third-world nation, through a devious stock-market shenanigan.

So, which story has provoked:

• the involvement of our legal friends?

and

• the following note prefaced to the on-line version?

This article is the subject of a legal complaint made on behalf of Nat Rothschild.

There: that wasn’t too difficult, was it?

Surf City

This Sunday, 2nd October, is the annual Blessing of the Waves (the capitals are obligatory) at Huntingdon Beach, Orange County, Los Angeles.

They need all the help they can get.

Meanwhile, it’s pretty good stuff at Sennen Cove, Cornwall.

Pennwydh concedes the “music” to LA, however —

— by the way, Malcolm’s daughter has a brother-in-law in LA whose Cadillac’s tail-fins make that lot look pathetic.