Though Cowards Flinch

Now listen up you people.  I’m a very important person with very important things to do and I can’t be spending all night blogging new blogs to you lot.

So here instead are some random snippets from other people, taken more or less completely out of context, but which I think you may find interesting, plus anything else that occurs to me as I go.

1.  Stephanie Flanders

Stephanie Flanders now sticks her blog pieces on the BBC website where Robert Peston used to stick his.  The main difference is that they are considerably better.  Here’s a bit of what she said about the Pre-Budget Report:

Come 2011, if the economy does look fairly strong, in the real world investors would be looking for the chancellor – any chancellor – to take advantage of that growth to speed the effort to cut borrowing.

He (I think we can assume it will be a he) might be punished in the bond markets if he failed to take that opportunity and stuck to these plans. In other words, the long-term cost of servicing the debt might well go up, as would borrowing costs for UK companies.

But investors and ratings agencies know that we are not living in the real world right now. We’re living in the lead-up to a general election.

So far, they seem willing to wait to hear from the winners of that election before making a definitive judgment about the UK.

Correct, and indeed ths view is vindicated by this morning’s news that Moody’s have absolutely no plans, even a tidgy bit, to downgrade the US or the UK.

This is good news, which will naturally come as a disappointment to Tories like this one, who is clearly a knob.  As Stephanie Flanders also says in her piece:

The Conservatives would rather the markets were less patient. If investors started openly to question Britain’s credibility as a borrower, George Osborne might have more chance of persuading voters of the need to be more hard-nosed about the budget than Alistair Darling was this week.

2.   Myths about public debt

Here’s an interesting paper by Glen O’Hara, a clever bloke who knows history, but not how to cut paragraphs down to manageable length.  So, take a deep breath and read his conclusion about four myths on public debt in the UK:

Four dangerous myths have gained a pernicious hold on public policy debate in the last few months. These are, firstly, that British public debt is at an unprecedented and unsustainable level. As we have seen, debt has been higher than its 2009 levels at many points during modern British history. The real ‘lesson’ we should take from British history is that public sector debt is now at levels that should elicit concern, but not panic. The second myth that must be challenged is that governments must slash spending, right away. Recent history repeatedly shows that the combination of background inflation, resurgent growth, tax rises and the establishment of a sound plateau for public spending are much more likely to be effective over the medium term. A third myth is the idea that the public finances are ‘out of control’, and particularly that the money borrowed has been wasted. On the contrary, there have undoubtedly been real and sustained improvements in public services, gains that should not now be thrown away with over-hasty cuts. Reducing the rate of public spending increases will, however, still be important over the next few years. But the fourth set of misconceptions, which leads politicians to feel the need to display an exaggerated ‘toughness’, are likely to frustrate rather than facilitate such efforts. Holding the Cabinet together, eschewing technical or immediate solutions, raising taxes, and accepting that gross government spending will actually continue to rise, will be essential if the expansion of state borrowing is to be reversed. Simply shouting about ‘cuts’, still less implementing ‘savage’ reductions, will not do.

This is kind of the same argument as put at CommentisFree, only better done.

3.  There’s only two Stuart Halls

Listen up.  Let us be quite clear about this.  There are two Stuart Halls of note.

The first one is nearly 80, and was on the radio last night.  He commentated on It’s a Knockout in the 1970s.

The other wrote the best short interpretation of what Thatcherism was and how it was discursively constructed.  He did so, astonishingly in retrospect, in January 1979 (first edition).  If you’ve not read it, do so here.

Stuart Hall.  Respect, man.  No, not the It’s a Knockout One, the Marxian cultural theorist.  Keep up.

4. Iain Dale found to be totally without value

Iain Dale, Tory person, has written to complain that an PR firm didn’t offer to pay him to give a talk at their client Christmas do.  He considers this wrong.

I consider it a totally accurate market assessment of his value as a commentator.

5.  Prize fight

I am entering the Orwell Prize for political blogging. 

I intend to win, and no-one will stand in my way, apart possibly from Dave Semple.  I would sell my own grandmother and all her Readers’ Digests to win this prize, but she died a long time ago and I don’t remember her keeping Readers’ Digests at all.

To win, I need to choose ten posts.  I have decided these should cover the range of what I get up to, and I will choose one from each of the following categories:

1) Funny 2) Written with feeling 3) Right up the mark topical 4) Theory 5) Organisational strategy 6) Rabid attack dog 7) List Contentious subject 9) Nursing-focused 10) Overseas development.

Your job, and I demand that you do it rigorously, is to send me what you think are my best posts in each of these categories. You should then also lobby the judges, Oona King and ‘Jack Night’ ceaslessly on my behalf until they give in just so they can get a couple of hours kip.

Right, that’s enough from me.  I’ve got very important things to do and I’m off.