Best Of

I am about to spend a day in London and I'm not takiung any cash with me.

Just the two grand phone, the ten grand watch, the fancy shoes and the sharp suit…

I am slumming it today, just the £1,500 watch, Watch Ultra 3 Hermès.

JohnO and myself are off to our regular working man’s venue for lunch, Claridge’s.

I never understood the joy in expensive watches. For any human purposes, my £5 Chinese watch is just as accurate as one 300 times the price. And if I lose it - which I do, frequently - it causes me only very minor vexation. I can wear it in a mosh pit, or in bed, or on the beach, or on a bike ride, without any anxiety whatsoever.

These are the worst government ratings until the next one.

I don't think so, they will still be the worst goverment ratings in 100 years time.

Just think, if you selected 30 people totally at random, how many would be shysters, fraudsters, liars and utter nincompoops and yet that is Starmer's Cabinet. Literally he could go to Euston Station and pick up 30 people from the next train to turn up and in all likelihood they would be less unsuited to being cabinet members than the ones he has chosen. That is how bad he is. But, he is evil as well of course.

He’s weak, inadequate, bureaucratic, self-serving, disloyal, inconstant, incompetent and mildly corrupt.

But not evil.

It doesn’t help to use emotional terms like that about political opponents

Edit: I forgot unprincipled and pusillanimous

Unhelpful as it is, the freedom to shout "Evil" at your opponents because nothing you say really matters is one of the few compensations of being in deep opposition.

And yes, socialist chums, government is harder than it looks, isn't it?

It’s still better for the discourse to refer to one’s political opponents as misguided rather than evil, even if your choice of language is unconstrained by law.

Government is always harder than opposition, as every new government quickly realises.

Yet there is a time when calling a government 'evil' might be apt. Hitler's regime, for instance. Or Stalin's. Or the Khmer Rouge. If Trump continues the way he is going, perhaps his.

Not this one though, not by a long shot. Leaderless, rudderless, incompetent; yes. But far, far from being evil. And neither were its predecessors.

I am about to spend a day in London and I'm not takiung any cash with me.

Just the two grand phone, the ten grand watch, the fancy shoes and the sharp suit…

I am slumming it today, just the £1,500 watch, Watch Ultra 3 Hermès.

JohnO and myself are off to our regular working man’s venue for lunch, Claridge’s.

I never understood the joy in expensive watches. For any human purposes, my £5 Chinese watch is just as accurate as one 300 times the price. And if I lose it - which I do, frequently - it causes me only very minor vexation. I can wear it in a mosh pit, or in bed, or on the beach, or on a bike ride, without any anxiety whatsoever.

Having a phone, why is there a need for a watch at all? I haven't worn one for years.

Your wrist is more accessible than your pocket or bag.

And getting your phone out immediately attracts a flock of bicycle thieves I believe.

Strange lot in Scotchland, then.

In London, the bicycle thieves steal bikes, mostly. May a plague of suppurating boils afflict their nether regions.

I heard a story recently about a bike thief trying to steal a very expensive triathlon bike from outside a cafe. He didn't get far, as he found it nearly impossible to ride and ended up abandoning it at the end of the road when the owner and his friends noticed. He didn't even steal the bike computer.

At the boat club, one of the rowers has had her bike stolen. The tracker (well integrated into it) shows the exact location. The police refused to do anything. There is some discussion about seeing the first two eight crews round to borrow it back - it's not far.

The police really need to be told (continually) that with many items being 100% trackable their unwillingness to do what many people believe is their job (tracking thiefs and returning stolen goods) is destroying the public's opinion of then.

Secondary effects. Policing doesn't seem to consider those.

I grew up in Oxford. In that period - up to the early 90s - there was the following phenomenon. A certain individual was known by all to be in charge of the drug trade in West Oxford. People I knew bought cannabis from his associates. He was quite visible. He would even have chats with the police. It was also noticeable that his attempted rivals in the business were rapidly arrested. This included students at the University - every year there would be someone who thought that getting into retail would save themselves money...

Speculation was generally blatant corruption. My thought was that the police were happy with an organised, non violent trade. See Olivia Channon.

Some years later, I was talking to ex-police officer at a social event. We got onto the topic of discretion in policing. When I mentioned my theory as to the chap (above) he said nothing. But looked quite smug.

I then pointed out that, whatever the truth, the police had convinced a generation of Oxford students that the police were corrupt. And who does PPE at Oxford?

I am about to spend a day in London and I'm not takiung any cash with me.

Just the two grand phone, the ten grand watch, the fancy shoes and the sharp suit…

I am slumming it today, just the £1,500 watch, Watch Ultra 3 Hermès.

JohnO and myself are off to our regular working man’s venue for lunch, Claridge’s.

I never understood the joy in expensive watches. For any human purposes, my £5 Chinese watch is just as accurate as one 300 times the price. And if I lose it - which I do, frequently - it causes me only very minor vexation. I can wear it in a mosh pit, or in bed, or on the beach, or on a bike ride, without any anxiety whatsoever.

Having a phone, why is there a need for a watch at all? I haven't worn one for years.

Your wrist is more accessible than your pocket or bag.

And getting your phone out immediately attracts a flock of bicycle thieves I believe.

Strange lot in Scotchland, then.

In London, the bicycle thieves steal bikes, mostly. May a plague of suppurating boils afflict their nether regions.

I heard a story recently about a bike thief trying to steal a very expensive triathlon bike from outside a cafe. He didn't get far, as he found it nearly impossible to ride and ended up abandoning it at the end of the road when the owner and his friends noticed. He didn't even steal the bike computer.

At the boat club, one of the rowers has had her bike stolen. The tracker (well integrated into it) shows the exact location. The police refused to do anything. There is some discussion about seeing the first two eight crews round to borrow it back - it's not far.

The police really need to be told (continually) that with many items being 100% trackable their unwillingness to do what many people believe is their job (tracking thiefs and returning stolen goods) is destroying the public's opinion of then.

It's the economy (stupid), because it usually is. And there have been a couple of years now where wages have grown faster than prices. But as long as most people have more month than money, they are going to be understandably unhappy.

But to a very large degree, that's out of the government's hands to fix, in the short term anyway. We can shuffle how things are paid for, but they will largely cost what they cost.

One interesting suggestion that I've come across recently is that PCP car financing explains why people are angrier than ever about the cost of living even though wages have grown faster than prices, and even though the large number of new cars about would suggest a healthy level of prosperity.

It has enabled people to buy cars that they previously wouldn't have been able to afford - but really they still can't afford them, and so they're struggling to make ends meet because of the millstone of car finance.

I haven't interrogated the idea to see if the numbers stack up, but it suggests a way forward for the government to help square the circle. Increase regulation of car financing to save people from immiserating themselves spending beyond their means, and although this will mean more people have to make do with a lower status motor, they will end up happier when they can more easily reach the end of the month with the money previously being spent on finance for the car they couldn't afford.

Yes, car list prices have gone up a lot in recent years, and the spike in interest rates a couple of years ago has made many new deals totally unaffordable on a like-for-like basis.

Why your average Joe leases a new car will remain a total mystery to me, it’s totally dead money as the depreciation is horrific for those first three or four years. It’s understandable for a company car, but totally mad for a personal one.

If you can't afford the 4 bedroom detached house your parents have, having a better brand of car may make you feel better.

The issue as you say is that people who leased cars are suddenly discovering that the due to higher interest rates (and to a lesser extent higher list prices) they can't afford to replace their current car with an identical replacement as the PCP rate is £200+ more due to interest rates. But because interest rates were so low between 2009 and 2022 people have got used to low risk borrowing being very low cost so the PCP rate of a car was discounted bulk purchase price - expected 3 year value + sod all interest and now it's less discounted bulk purchase price - lower 3 year value + a lot of interest.