Thursday, July 28, 2011
Lots of news
Being on holiday, are indulging in newspapers with breakfast, so they are getting read more thoroughly than is usual. I am learning all kinds of interesting facts.
For example, there is the chap somewhere in South Africa who woke up in the morgue fridge some hours after being declared dead. He is now recovering at home. On the basis that an unconscious person would usually die of cold in a fridge, one can only suppose that the morgue fridge was of the same quality as the original declaration.
And another chap call Hague who has decided that the eastern rebels are the legitimate government of the whole of Libya.
Then we have the ongoing saga of the maid who was abused in New York and whose conversation with a compatriot on her mobile phone is now in the public domain. How did it get there? How come, when our newspapers have dined out on hacking for the last few weeks, they are not getting excited about this? Perhaps I missed some perfectly innocent explanation.
Not to mention the ongoing saga of the flat-lining economy. I have said it before, and I say it again, that it is not a good sign when a large rich country thinks that the end is nigh when it stops getting larger and richer. This despite the fact that we are not getting any less rich or getting any less large; there are still plenty of beer and skittles to be had. But sooner or later the growth dancing is going to have to stop. Either we run out of oil or people who are prepared to work harder than we are are going to start getting larger and richer at our expense. Which last would be a good thing given their starting point. Where is the Christian charity that we used to be so keen on pushing down Moslem and other throats?
I then started to wonder about the spectacle of the biggest economy in the world running the roll-over of their debt right up to the wire. First thought was that it was scarcely the sign of a mature political environment. Second thought was that, when you have two serious parties in fundamental disagreement (leaving aside that fact that one of them does not appear to have much of a popular mandate for its position of scrubbing out cheap drugs for the elderly (of which there are lots)), it is going to go to the wire. That is how negotiations work. But maybe in Europe we would have done it in smoke filled rooms rather than on the pages of the Wall Street Journal.
I close with a word puzzle. I had thought that 'goojar' was a word of negative tone used by travellers and gypsies to describe their sedentary fellow countrymen. But I learn today that the same word was current in the Ganga valley of the 19th century as the name of a tribe or caste of robbers and such like who lived on the outside edge of the wilderness by preying on those who lived on the inside edge. Is there any connection?
For example, there is the chap somewhere in South Africa who woke up in the morgue fridge some hours after being declared dead. He is now recovering at home. On the basis that an unconscious person would usually die of cold in a fridge, one can only suppose that the morgue fridge was of the same quality as the original declaration.
And another chap call Hague who has decided that the eastern rebels are the legitimate government of the whole of Libya.
Then we have the ongoing saga of the maid who was abused in New York and whose conversation with a compatriot on her mobile phone is now in the public domain. How did it get there? How come, when our newspapers have dined out on hacking for the last few weeks, they are not getting excited about this? Perhaps I missed some perfectly innocent explanation.
Not to mention the ongoing saga of the flat-lining economy. I have said it before, and I say it again, that it is not a good sign when a large rich country thinks that the end is nigh when it stops getting larger and richer. This despite the fact that we are not getting any less rich or getting any less large; there are still plenty of beer and skittles to be had. But sooner or later the growth dancing is going to have to stop. Either we run out of oil or people who are prepared to work harder than we are are going to start getting larger and richer at our expense. Which last would be a good thing given their starting point. Where is the Christian charity that we used to be so keen on pushing down Moslem and other throats?
I then started to wonder about the spectacle of the biggest economy in the world running the roll-over of their debt right up to the wire. First thought was that it was scarcely the sign of a mature political environment. Second thought was that, when you have two serious parties in fundamental disagreement (leaving aside that fact that one of them does not appear to have much of a popular mandate for its position of scrubbing out cheap drugs for the elderly (of which there are lots)), it is going to go to the wire. That is how negotiations work. But maybe in Europe we would have done it in smoke filled rooms rather than on the pages of the Wall Street Journal.
I close with a word puzzle. I had thought that 'goojar' was a word of negative tone used by travellers and gypsies to describe their sedentary fellow countrymen. But I learn today that the same word was current in the Ganga valley of the 19th century as the name of a tribe or caste of robbers and such like who lived on the outside edge of the wilderness by preying on those who lived on the inside edge. Is there any connection?
# posted by Jim @ 2:04 AM 
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30/7/2011: I read in today's DT in a piece by Charles Moore, that I share my unease about growth with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Prince of Wales, both of whom are well known for off-beat public pronouncements. But confidence is restored when Charles goes on to explain that if we are not getting bigger then we must be getting smaller. This might not be very arithmetical but it does cut to the chase, to the point that a system which has to go either up or down is not too hot. We ought to be able to rest on our laurels. Cultivate dahlias and golf handicaps. That sort of thing.
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