The bailout was actually cheap
Though the £37bn bailout was huge change for the bankers, it was for the rest of us both easy and cheap, write Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot. First, the bailout is capital, not current spending. It is not like the schools' budget to which it has been absurdly compared. It is simply a recomposition of government assets. You might have cash; you might have shares; you might move money from one to the other. Doing so is not the same as eating a prodigious quantity of cake. The bailout is not consumption of taxpayers' cash. In fact, the Government might well turn out to have acquired these assets for a song. All assets can go down in value (that includes cash in times of inflation). These have a good chance of going up. Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot The Times
Full article: Crash! Boom! Disaster! That's enough crazy talk 
Short-term thinking got us here
The financial crisis is just one consequence of a system which demands that governments sacrifice long-term survival for short-term gains, says George Monbiot. In this case, political leaders on both sides of the Atlantic - from Reagan to Brown - decided to appease business lobbyists and boost short-term growth by allowing the banks to use new financial instruments, many of which were as dodgy as a three-pound coin. It made perfect political sense, as long as the inevitable crash took place after they left office. For similar reasons we are likely to be ambushed by other nasty surprises: runaway climate change, resource depletion, foreign policy blowback, new surveillance and genetic technologies, skills shortages, demographic change, a declining tax base, private and public debt. Politics is the art of shifting trouble from the living to the unborn. George Monbiot The Guardian
Full article: If an hour is a long time in politics, we must start thinking in centuries
Why I'm backing Obama
If Obama wins, then it will be simply fatuous to claim that there are no black role models in politics or government, because there is no higher role model than the President of the United States. If Barack Hussein Obama is successful next month, then we could even see the beginning of the end of race-based politics, with all the grievance-culture and special interest groups and political correctness that come with it. If Obama wins, he will have established that being black is as relevant to your ability to do a hard job as being left-handed or ginger-haired, and he will have re-established America's claim to be the last, best hope of Earth. Boris Johnson Daily Telegraph
Full article: Barack Obama: Why I believe he should be the next President
Prophet Obama smites King McCain
People: Boris Johnson backs Obama
Why Labour had to spend
Dangerous myths arise from the hazy fog of great economic crises, writes Steve Richards. The most common misunderstanding relates to the Government's approach to public spending. In the early 21st century Britain was booming, but its public services were crumbling. Hospitals could not cope with winter outbreaks of flu - a big story when Lord Winston gave his interview. Other stories around that time included the extraordinary fear that schools would close because they could not attract teachers. Badly paid GPs were leaving for other countries. London theatres warned audiences to arrive early because public transport was so unreliable that it was unlikely they would get there in time. Trains were crashing, if they managed to leave their stations of origin at all. The lack of spending by successive governments, now seen as virtuous, had easily forgotten consequences. Steve Richards The Independent
Full article: The reckless profligacy of Labour is a Tory myth
The Mole: More Tory jitters as YouGov poll hints at hung parliament
Separate aid from religion
The accusation that religious groups are exploiting parlous economic conditions to add numbers to their flock is a common one, says a Times leader. There is little doubt that it has happened frequently, notably in India. The so-called "rice Christians" sought conversion, it is said, less for the hope of salvation in the next world than in the hope of survival in this. The Christian Church has, quite rightly, long forsworn such practice. That is not to say that it does not still happen. There is a continuing controversy about the action of North American Protestants and their activities in Latin America. Those who enter a country to alleviate its material poverty should separate that mission from what they take to be its spiritual poverty. Leader The Times
Full article: Praying in aid
In Brief
Black swan theory
Once, not so long ago, one could go to a social occasion and discuss life, love, politics, TV, maybe even a little culture. Now there is only one topic in town, and that is money. The very guests whom everyone at a party would avoid – dead-eyed money men, braying bankers – are now VIPs. They are on the frontline! They can explain what backwardation is, talk for hours about leveraging and black swan theory! Terence Blacker The Independent
Full article: We're in the grip of money madness
Labour fears poor white voters
So fearful is Labour of white working-class voters that it has long sought to avoid debate about immigration. In the 2001 general election, speeches were banned at the Oldham election counts to stop BNP candidates speaking, for fear that a hateful word might start a race riot. The result was to allow the far Right to pose as champions of free speech. Mick Hume The Times
Full article: Labour's race prophecy may be self-fulfilling
Heroin screws you up
Anyone naive enough to think that teenagers get the message of health campaigns in the way that they are intended to receive it should remember the "heroin screws you up" campaign from the same era - it had to be withdrawn when it became clear that the emaciated youth featured in the campaign had become a sex symbol and that thousands of the posters had been stolen and were plastered over teenagers' bedrooms.
Ross Clark The Times
Full article: The Scouts should stick to tying knots
Cumbersome planning
The English planning system is possibly the most cumbersome and dilatory in the developed world. It is this that has caused unconscionable delays in the building of new school premises to replace the excrescences put up in the 1960s – which for unfathomable reasons are thought worth preserving by 'Heritage' organisations with more influence than taste. Dominic Lawson The Independent
Full article: Keynes is not enough, Mr Darling
News in Pictures: The Stirling Prize 2008
How America turned religious
At an "evangelical megachurch" in California, Obama blamed his early "experiments" with alcohol and drugs on "a certain selfishness", and McCain confessed to his "greatest moral failing" with the end of his first marriage. And yet, weird and embarrassing as this sounded to Europeans, it would have done so to Americans also not long ago. In 1952 Dwight Eisenhower had so little religious upbringing that he needed to be discreetly baptised before he reached the White House. Geoffrey Wheatcroft The Guardian
Full article: God bother in Wasilla
US Election 2008
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