Category Archives: Asides

Recession ahead, drive carefully

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From today’s Telegraph…

Forget inflation and the manufacturing figures. Stop looking at the latest existing home sales figures or the data on non-farm payrolls. One of the most accurate indicators of an imminent recession is in and Americans should start tightening their belts.

Winnebago, maker of the famous recreational vehicles, expects its first drop in sales in six years

Winnebago, the makers of the famous recreational vehicles so prominent on the highways of the US, is expected to post a decline in sales this year for the first time in six years. Buying a motor home is seen as the ultimate discretionary item, and over the past three decades, declines have always heralded a rapid slowdown in the US economy.

“Recreational vehicles are at the swing end of discretionary spending because no-one needs an RV, and certainly no-one needs a new RV,” said fund manager Ron Muhlenkamp, who began selling Winnebago shares last year.

As the US housing slump continues, petrol prices head above $3-a-gallon once more and consumer confidence takes a nosedive, sales of motor homes, along with other typical discretionary items such as Harley Davidson motorcycles and plastic surgery, are forecast to fall…

Helpful information: The model shown is a 2008 Damon Tuscany 4055. Yours for $231,070 on the road. Cash in that sub-prime mortgage now.

The smell of burning toast

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The latest Brown cock-up du jour is a gift to right-wing nutters like Simon Heffer. Here he is, this morning, in full spate:

Some of us remember not merely the submersion of the Major government under its tide of lies, peculation, rent-boys and mistresses, but also the Poulson affair of the early 1970s. That, too, like this present funding crisis and the Northern Rock debacle, had its roots in the North East, which since then has become the heartland of Labour’s client state. Poulson and his comrade-in-arms T Dan Smith bribed local councillors and officials to get lucrative building contracts. I am sure that this sort of thing has no bearing on the business interests of the real donor of £558,000 to the Labour Party, said to be David Abrahams, alias David Martin, aged 53/63? What are we to make of the decision by the Highways Agency at a time when the Transport Department was run by Mr Brown’s blue-eyed boy, Douglas Alexander, to waive objections to a development scheme that stood to earn Mr Abrahams/Martin £60 million?

It might seem that Labour has netted a one per cent rake-off of Mr Abrahams’/Martin’s earnings on this scheme. I am sure that this couldn’t be true. But it smells to high heaven, does it not? What is Mr Abrahams’/Martin’s link to Harriet Harman? Why did he feel he had to fund her successful deputy leadership campaign surreptitiously? Is it at all a coincidence that her husband, Jack Dromey, is the party’s treasurer? Is her position compromised by this association with a man with interchangeable names, who uses others to shell out huge amounts of money on his behalf, who was deselected when he stood as a Labour candidate because he invented a wife and child, and who appears not even to have a fixed date of birth? Is that the sort of man Mr Brown wants funding Labour, or his deputy leader wants funding her? Is this the sleaze-free, whiter-than-white image that Labour smugly boasted would prevail once the wicked, venal Tories were ousted? Is that a pig I just saw flying past the window?

Tut, tut. He was doing ok until that last sentence. One mustn’t over-egg literary puddings.

What’s interesting, though, is how bad Brown is at handling this stuff compared to Blair.

William Blake

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250 years ago today, the poet, painter and engraver William Blake was born in Soho. One of the great paradoxes of life is that a poem (“Jerusalem”) written by this dazzling revolutionary and dissenter should have been appropriated for imperialist anthems.

And did those feet in ancient time
walk upon England’s mountains green?

And was the holy Lamb of God
on England’s pleasant pastures seen?

And did the countenance divine
shine forth upon our clouded hills?

And was Jerusalem builded here
among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!

Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,
nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,

till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant Land.

I’ve often wondered how this came about. Wikipedia offers this explanation:

The poem, which was little known during the century which followed its writing, was included in a patriotic anthology of verse published in 1916, a time when morale had begun to decline due to the high number of casualties in the First World War and the perception that there was no end in sight.

Under these circumstances, it seemed to many to define what Britain was fighting for. Therefore, Robert Bridges, the Poet Laureate asked Parry to put it to music at a Fight for Right campaign meeting in London’s Queen’s Hall. The aims of this organisation were “to brace the spirit of the nation that the people of Great Britain, knowing that they are fighting for the best interests of humanity, may refuse any temptation, however insidious, to conclude a premature peace, and may accept with cheerfulness all the sacrifices necessary to bring the war to a satisfactory conclusion”[3]. Bridges asked Parry to supply the verse with “suitable, simple music that an audience could take up and join in”. Originally Parry intended the first verse to be sung by a solo female voice, but this is rare nowadays. The most famous version was orchestrated by Sir Edward Elgar in 1922 for a large orchestra at the Leeds Festival. Upon hearing the orchestral version for the first time, King George V said that he preferred “Jerusalem” over “God Save the King”, the National Anthem.

Anyway, Happy Birthday Master Blake!

Don Norman: kids aren’t smarter than us; they just have more free time

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Interesting CNET interview with the guru himself:

For years I used to say, “We shouldn’t have to adapt to technology, it should adapt to us.” I now believe that’s wrong. We shouldn’t have to adapt to arbitrary technology. On the other hand, so much of our modern life has been a major adaptation to the technology surrounding us, whether it’s heating systems, lights, telephone, or television.

If you’d asked me to predict texting I’d have said, “No, it’s really too hard. Jeesh, you need to type three times to get a ‘C.’ That’s ridiculous.” Not only did people learn it, but (they) learned it so well…So, there’s an adaptation for you.

Now, just as an aside, I think it has not to do with the age…I think it has to do with how you live your life…In my case, it was easy because I grew up helping develop the technology so I learned it as it was developed. For many, it suddenly sprung on them and it’s true, it’s hard to keep up.
As people, we should not care about the technology. We should care about the benefits it gives us.

The issue is not how tech-savvy you are, or how quick you pick up to it. I believe these are things that often take many hours to master…You just didn’t want to spend the next 20 hours of your life mastering it. But a lot of the kids, they have that kind of time to devote to it…

William Boot, RIP

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The memorial service for Bill Deedes was held yesterday. Andrew O’ Hagan was there.

One night at the Hay Literary Festival, the novelist Monica Ali and I quizzed Bill about how much Evelyn Waugh had exaggerated when making up the character of William Boot, the hero of Scoop, who is said to be based on the young Bill Deedes. “Oh, quite a lot,” he said. “I wasn’t that into cleft sticks, though I did pack an absurd amount of stuff. But Waugh wasn’t such a good reporter you know. Frightfully good at other stuff, but not much use to a paper, I must say.”

Activating the amygdala

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Funny what one finds in the Telegraph…

Plunging stock prices ignite the same circuits in your brain that respond to the snarl of a lion. Just a flash of the red colour that symbolises a downtick is enough to excite the circuitry in your brain – and to make reflective thinking more difficult…

Summer’s been cancelled — for some hacks

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I watched the second half of the England-Croatia match in utter disbelief — not at the result, but at the state of the pitch, which was like that of a Conference League club after a bad winter. And this is supposed to be Britain’s national stadium.

My colleague, Peter Preston, has been watching the impact of the match on the football media…

When England – or, indeed, any home country – fails to qualify for a World Cup or Euro championship, it’s not just the fans who feel let down. The travelling press misses its big adventure, too. Scores of expert correspondents who might have been having a wonderful time in central Europe are stuck at home with the wife, dog and garden. The nights in the beer halls, the schnitzels and fondues, the expenses chits… all suddenly evaporate.

‘The first thing that happened when I got in on the morning after was a message from the managing editor asking me to re-budget my summer spending,’ said one doleful sports editor. He was not alone. Good news for Croatia was dire news for the UK’s growth editorial industry: sports journalism.

One myth of old Fleet Street is that hacks don’t care. But they do. They are genuine fans, true footie junkies. Their bosses are hooked on national moments, and also gathered around the TV in the office last Wednesday, part of an audience 11 million strong enjoying a national moment that might shift a few copies as well. This feels like disaster for them because it upends expectations, cancels hotels, planes, travel plans – and leaves a lumpen month of nothingness where excitement ought to be…

Aw, poor dears.

How to avoid bunglers at the Revenue

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Good advice from Jill Insley.

I won’t bore you with my views about the complete uselessness and incompetence of HM Revenue and Customs, which failed to learn any lessons from two previous data losses in September and October. Instead, I would like to point out to prospective parents who may, quite understandably, feel nervous about signing up for child benefit following this debacle, that there is a very simple way around the issue of providing HMRC with your current account details.

It will only work with savings accounts run by institutions (such as the Skipton building society, which told me about this) that are not clearing banks. You can elect to have your child benefit paid straight into a savings account. This means that, instead of having to supply your own current account number and sort code to the HMRC and anyone it cares to share that information with, you provide the number and sort code of the bank account used by your savings institution, plus the reference number of your own savings account. Much harder to crack for your average fraudster.