Best Of

I cannot regard Howe as a villain. It is not his fault that the Tories obsessed about Europe for the subsequent 30 years to the detriment of themselves and the country. It is not is fault that Thatcher went on too long undoing some of the good that she had done with his considerable assistance.

What I am concerned about is where are the Howes of today? He was a serious intellectual heavyweight who thought deeply about public policy and the public good. Like every human he wasn't always right but he was deeply focused on that public good, ahead even of party political considerations. I cannot think of his equivalent in the House of Commons today. Instead, our most prominent politicians are interested in sound bites, social media, clickbait and, above all, themselves. They are obsessed with what sounds good rather than what is good. Gestures instead of substance. It's sad.

Edit, see this fracking nonsense this morning.

@RochdalePioneers Tennents is rank - there's a reason that even Scottish pubs serve Innis & Gunn instead these days

Compared to Carling it is Nectar. Not that great in tins but ok in draught in a pub if not top class, certainly not rank as a cooking lager, only 4% so never going to be great.

I am going to the funeral of a good friend who died of cancer at 63 tomorrow. Amongst the many twists and turns of a fascinating career he was in charge of the Student Union in Edinburgh for a couple of years and very well connected on the Ibiza party scene. He always drank Tenants and, when challenged about it, he said it was reliable, tasted the same wherever you went and relatively weak so that you could drink a sociable amount of it without losing your grip if you were on duty or otherwise being responsible.

I may well have to sink a pint of the stuff in his memory tomorrow.

If we’re the 6th most indebted developed nation and have the 4th or 5th largest developed nation GDP, that presumably means our indebtedness is consistent with other developed countries.

The most indebted developed country in absolute terms is the USA, by far.

That has an element of thinking of before the fall of the Roman Empire or 2007.....

I am sure the Telegraph article is overblown, but the UK is now paying an insane amount of tax revenue on just servicing the debt (which Rachel from Accounts has set us on a course to be even further expanded) and we haven't had the sort of growth required to keep up with an aging and expanding population for 20+ years. And there is still absolutely no sign the UK has a solution to this problem. And hence why as soon as government increase taxes, we need to increase them again.

And yet we are not out of line with other developed countries.

Singapore has a debt to GDP ratio of 174 last year for example.

Debt is only really an issue if you cannot pay the interest on it, and we can.

I am as dry as dust on government debt and would very much like to see a balanced budget, but the idea that we are headed to the IMF is nonsense.