Dancing around the issues

With TV programmers looking to fill the entertainment slot left by Britain’s Got Talent, Prime Minister's Question Time from the Commons may provide the solution. As choreography goes it was a fine display yesterday with ministers manoeuvring around Gordon Brown. A variation of Strictly Come Dancing with partners voting themselves off the dance floor.

If only they moved as quickly to solve the crises they have created. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, “To lose one cabinet minister is unfortunate; to lose two.....”

Right said (Sir) Fred - it's a hole new crisis

Those readers old enough to remember Bernard Cribbens and his song about men trying to dig a hole and then giving up. might pause to reflect on how it all ended. After many attempts to dig said hole, the lads abandoned it. In the lyrics the line was: Right said Fred, let's have another cuppa tea and then go home. Or in Gordon’s case, lets go to the White House.

The hole gets deeper; Lord Myners says he knew something but not everything about the pension deal. Yet Harriet Harman says the government will seek legal action to stop Sir Fred getting the full whack. Something m' learned friends think might be hard to deliver. But that doesn’t matter because apparently the case is not scheduled for Court Number One at the Old Bailey but at the court of public opinion. Presumably it’s the one across the road in the pub.

Storm in a coffee cup

It is a sign of the times that nearly eighty years ago, as depression swept the western world, the British Empire or what remained of it sat down, brewed a nice cup of tea then tried to figure what went wrong.

Today as the greatest minds in Europe plus our own Prime Minister prepare for the April G20 summit, the true state of the British economy is brought home, not by an infusion of leaves from Ceylon, but by that standard bearer of globalisation, Starbucks.

NIMBY ... or not in my back yard until “buddy can you spare a loan?” – all currencies accepted

For those with a long memory, you might recall that globalisation was touted as a sort of business panacea; embrace this concept and all will be well with international trade. A keen supporter, surprisingly, turned out to be Bin Laden himself (or perhaps one of the 20 plus people the CIA believe might be him.) He appeared in a video wearing a Taiwanese watch; carrying a Chinese Kalashnikov; speaking into a Japanese camera; and transmitted via a US satellite uplink, espousing his particular version of the Internationale.

Ah, things were so simple then. Now, it is not a good time to be a foreigner in a globalised, UK, world. Workers at nuclear power plants in Sellafield, and Heysham joined oil refinery workers at Lindsey to protest at the employment of non UK nationals, leading Lord Mandelson to proclaim that the strikers were pursuing the “politics of xenophobia”.

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood

No. It was not about an attempt to “bury bad news.” Just coincidence that Bank Governor Mervyn King’s gloomy outlook for the UK economy hit the Press on the same day as the Obama speech. His predictions about “a difficult year for us all” had been underlined by the announcement that the Royal Bank of Scotland had made the biggest corporate loss in British history. So could it be that we are about to be rescued by the US 7th Cavalry, also known as the Federal Reserve Bank? The pound, which has fallen in value by 25% since mid-2007, could certainly do with some support.

Obama’s address has been variously described as “not enough like Lincoln at Gettysburg” or “in the great traditions of Paul Revere and the call to arms” (against, you recall, the British invader). So whilst opinion remains divided on the rhetoric, what is clear is that he firmly placed crisis at the top of the agenda. According to one US TV commentator on Pennsylvania Avenue, “he was, in American parlance, telling it like it is.”

Easing our way out of a crisis?

Funny how some situations often have a buzz phrase attached. "Book him, Dano", from Hawaii 5-0; or "You're nicked", from The Sweeney; or "Loadsamoney", courtesy of Harry Enfield. Which brings us neatly to financial crises which have generated their own vocabulary. The pound in your pocket; subprime loans; crisis? what crisis; and now, step forward quantitative easing ... a buzz phrase you will be hearing more of in the future.

It's jargon for printing our way out of the current credit crunch. Like the Weimar Republic and Mr Mugabe why not just print more money and all will be well. Watch out, too, for the concept of the "bad bank" ... something being seriously considered. Basically a state bank would be set up where all those so-called toxic loans could be parked out of harm's way ... and then covered by the taxpayer.