Remarkable

Apparently, acording to the headline, the UK economy is "remarkable". Rub your eyes and read on:

"Macroeconomic stability in the UK remains remarkable," its report said.

But, it did warn that the Chancellor needs to rein in spending to stop budget deficits widening further...

It added that Mr Brown's success in sticking to his golden rule - of borrowing only to invest during the economic cycle - depended on "a precise dating" of the cycle.

"The adjustments in the definition of the cycle have proved an unhelpful distraction from the more important considerations of what a sustainable fiscal policy is," the IMF said.

In July, Mr Brown declared the current economic cycle began in 1997 rather than 1999 - a move some experts said was effectively moving the goalposts for his own rules.

They swooped on the change, accusing Mr Brown of "cheating" to avoid breaching another strand of the golden rule, namely on balancing the budget over the economic cycle.'

(emphasis added)

The right bar has:

Retail mood hits a 22 year low

Economic growth still sluggish

The headline is contradicted by the article. Strange.

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BBC's hands clean: rendition of the truth proceeds apace.

So the BBC, itching to say some really nasty things about George Bush's Iraq 'adventure' and Saddam's trial, daren't say it themselves but instead outsource the job to one of our admirable academic fraternity.

Imagine though: would the BBC even consider the same approach to calling Saddam an evil and criminal dictator, in the circumstances? I think not; they would never allow it to be said, let alone themselves say such a thing.

Yet here the reassuringly educated-sounding tranzi-commentator (whose job naturally depends on convincing people of the benefits of international legal procedures) says, quite brazenly, 'Regardless of specific American influences, though, the whole trial is tainted in some eyes by the illegality of the initial invasion.'

Don't the Beeb geddit; ever? That's Saddam's argument in a nutshell, and the Beeb are making it for him via this academic cipher. Just to underscore this point, it isn't, in this article's view, that some people think the Iraq invasion was illegal, it's that because the Iraq war was illegal some people think the trial is tainted. If it really were they'd be right to, because illegality implies that the status quo ante was more just than the status quo post invasion, ergo Saddam's innocent in this court at this time. As I said, Saddam's argument: and the BBC is broadcasting it.

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Capitalism is cool again at the Beeb

Well, if Gordon Brown says so and you have a BBC show to plug:

"I hate the idea of creating a committee or a quango for this purpose, but a focussed group with a clear objective to create a new blueprint for entrepreneurial flair in Britain wouldn't be such a bad idea.

Let's bring together the relevant government bodies, private companies, leaders in education and gurus from all walks of life and see if we can find a way of channelling all this energy and interest in business into something productive for future generations.

But if you want something exciting or even sexy to happen as a result, my advice would be: put an entrepreneur in charge.

Catch up on Peter Jones's £175,000 Dragons' Den investment in a new publishing venture in a special programme featuring the original contestants from the Dragons' Den one year on: Dragons' Den: Where are they now?, 7pm, BBC Two, Wednesday 21 December."

Absolutely shameless.

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This day in history

Ashley Pomeroy notes the Beeb's disgust with the emancipation of the huddled masses of the estates from sharecropping by that wicked Thatcher - or the right to buy.

On the left is the news report from the time - read it and weep at how neutral-ish it seems compared to now.

Look at the blue boxed editorial - and wake up:

"Many people who bought their homes under Thatcher's "Right-to-Buy" scheme are now struggling to pay for the upkeep of their properties which are no longer maintained by local authorities.

The controversial scheme has also dramatically reduced the number of available council homes and there is now a huge shortage of social housing across the UK.

Since the introduction of the scheme in 1980 there have been major changes to the size of the discount tenants are eligible for. The maximum discount is 60% of the home's value or £38,000, whichever is greater.

In many areas of the UK the scheme has been abused and there are now strict regulations about when tenants can resell their property after purchasing it at a discount." (emphasis added)

If they can't keep up the payments, they can always sell.

Pity the poor local authorities - forced to lay off slack bloated civil servants who batten off the working taxpayer when the work of telling tenants what colour to paint their homes dried up. I suppose those local authority workers probably did help stem the tide of pebble dashing and gnomes, marks of aspirational Thatcher voting Little England in White City.

This whole lack of affordable housing malarky is pure nonsense - sure housing is expensive in the UK, but the great majority of people do have somewhere to live. "Social housing" is just another euphemism for soaking the working middle class to subsidise those who slacked off at school.

"Abuse" would appear to be what my aunt (who works two jobs) did with her ex-council house - mortgaged it to buy an apartment in Spain. Oh these poor workers, seduced in their false consciousness by the wicked capitalist system...when will they learn that their betters in Islington have worked out how best they should live?

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Ghosts of administrations past

A whole article on the transformation of New York from 1970s bankrupt Democrat hell-on-earth to naughties Republican safe place to be, and only one, oblique, reference to Giuliani:

"Maybe some of the credit is courtesy of Mike Bloomberg, the coolly pragmatic tycoon and philanthropist, recently re-elected mayor after spending $60m (£34.3m) of his own money on his campaign.

Unlike his feisty predecessor, Rudy Giuliani, this mayor has a soothing style and is more willing to listen to opponents."

Bloomberg is a crypto-Democrat, so he is only a little bit evil, it seems, unlike the wicked Giuliani, who locked up criminals (the horror!).

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Fat camp

Well I never.

Australia, Iran and Arabia have obesity problems, but in the US, it is a reflection of ideology:

"Yet the US obesity problem has particular resonance, perhaps because it is reflection of the modern way of life the country typifies, with its junk food and technology of convenience."

Just what part of anti-American bias does Mr Davis not understand? If "The US is one of the worst affected countries in the world, but in percentage terms not the worst", then surely it is not some elusive American culture of imperialist technological rape-the-world laziness that is responsible?

Anti-Americanism truly is the new anti-Semitism, allowing its adherents to ascribe to Americans mutually inconsistent evil motives.

Note also the non-sequitur - "Back in 1960, a 250-pound (113kg) American Football player was considered a giant. This year, more than 550 players weighing 300lbs or more were on NFL training camp rosters." Look at the camps - I suspect that the 300lbs is pure muscle, and hardly the place where fatties train to be elite footballers, but never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Update An anonymous commenter finds those trans-Atlantic fatsos - here they are in the UK in June 2005:

and here they are in the US in December 2005:

(Haloscan deletes comments after a few months - thanks Anon!)

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Britishness

So, the government has dropped the test for hate-preaching imams. Afraid? Be very afraid:

'The Home Office said it hoped that a tougher English language test for foreign-born religious leaders would automatically mean they had a knowledge of British life.

An official said: “If someone has to take a test showing showing they are a confident user of English, both written and spoken, they will have inevitably learnt about life in Britain. They will have read newspapers and listened to the BBC.”' (emphasis added)

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