Mourinho of the Lane?

An innocent enquiry: might these two headlines be in any way connected?

Jol looks for advice as axe looms at Spurs

(Nonsense, no doubt. But it's good to see Chelsea in trouble.)

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David Brooks

David Brooks is not merely, as James calls him, America’s most perceptive conservative commentator. He is also author of the wonderful Bobos in Paradise.

And I have a personal reason to be grateful to him. He is also one of the progenitors of my think tank, CNE. 

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An affair to remember

I was sent this Bar Mitzvah invite the other day. It's no doubt spurious, but it's nonetheless got elements of the truth about it:

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Don't worry, we'll bail you out

I was about to publish a post pointing out the message of Alistair Darling's guarantee to Northen Rock last night: that if you run a bank irresponsibly, it doesn't matter because the government will bail you out.

But Daniel Finkelstein got there first:

Guaranteeing deposits at Northern Rock and offering to do the same for other institutions may prevent meltdown, but there is a large moral hazard cost. Banks now know that they don't pay the full penalty if they find themselves at risk of running out of cash.

It will be interesting to see how long the Government's extraordinary guarantee lasts for. Too short and it won't work. Too long and the moral hazard cost becomes almost unbearable.

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Drugs double standards

According to the Mail:

Jodie Kidd could lose up to £500,000 worth of modelling contracts in the wake of claims that she procured cocaine for undercover reporters posing as businessmen. 

Or are we back to the usual double standards - that dealers on sink estates are scum who deserve to be locked up, but it's somehow different altogether when the dealers and the people they supply are 'people like us'?

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Run on Labour (Wall Street Journal Europe)

I have a piece in today's Wall Street Journal Europe on the politics of the Northern Rock fiasco. Here's an extract:

We still await the first polls on the subject, but it is a near-certainty that the government will be held, at least in part, responsible. The TV news programs are full of economic correspondents pointing out that Britain's economic boom is built on an unsustainable credit bubble, and that this crisis might be merely the first. The Conservative leader, David Cameron, has said that: "This government has presided over a huge expansion of public and private debt without showing awareness of the risks involved. Under Labour our economic growth has been built on a mountain of debt." If that message sinks in, then Labour's prize asset -- Gordon Brown's reputation for economic competence -- will be blown apart.

That reputation has been the single biggest obstacle to any Conservative revival. If it is destroyed and the Conservatives are able to persuade voters that they are -- as was axiomatic before Black Wednesday -- the people to trust with the economy, then the entire shape of British politics will have changed.

 The likelihood of that happening is increased by the figure of the current Chancellor of the Exchequer. There was never a more dominant chancellor than Gordon Brown. When Tony Blair was prime minister, he was often described as the chairman of the board, with Mr. Brown as his CEO. It was a longstanding political joke that when Gordon Brown became prime minister, he might as well be his own Chancellor, since only political eunuchs would be in contention for the actual job. And the appointment of Alistair Darling proved that the joke was for real.

...That is precisely why he was chosen by Gordon Brown -- to be a cipher who would have no public profile and, more importantly, to be an empty vessel who would not use the chancellorship to exercise any of the political power which is usually attendant with the post.

That tactic is now rebounding on Mr. Brown. At the very time when the U.K.needs a chancellor to be reassuring and to exude competence, Mr. Darling is a man clearly out of his depth -- stuttering, misremembering critical statistics and incapable of going beyond petty political jibes. He points out in a series of interviews that Mr. Cameron was a junior official at the Treasury at the time the Conservatives presided over the collapse of Britain's ERM membership -- as if that was in any way relevant to the current crisis. His reassurances count for nothing, and exacerbate the feeling that this is a crisis not just for Northern Rock and banking but also for the government.

 

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Brown non si sente pił in luna di miele. Crisi vicina, voto meno (Il Foglio)

I had a piece in Saturday's Il Foglio, on the relative positions of Brown and Cameron. You can read it here.

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Hello, my name is Stephen. I’m an addict... (The Times)

I have a piece in today's Times about the British Gambling Prevalence Study and problem gambling. Here's an extract:

The study is due to report that, of the 40 million of us who gamble, 2 per cent are “problem gamblers”; some 800,000 of the population.

Gambling can wreck lives. It can lead people into debt, into crime and into the gutter. But so, too, can stamp collecting. So can missionary work. So, in fact, can anything, if pursued without sense and without the funds to support it. But I have yet to read about the social problems caused by stamp collectors who blow their budget on penny blacks.

This week’s report is a classic piece of scaremongering, based on defining its key term so widely as to render it meaningless. Problem gamblers are measured in such reports - there was one in 1999 that found that there were 300,000 of us - through the answers given to a series of questions. Have you ever chased your losses? Have you ever lied about the amount you have gambled? Have you ever gambled more than you intended? How often do you gamble?

Here’s my confession, and why I am one of the 800,000 so-called problem gamblers. My answer to all of those questions would, at some time, have been yes. When I was a schoolboy, I sometimes told my father that I had put on a 2p yankee - total cost 22p - when it had actually been a 5p yankee (55p). I have gone to the racecourse with a budget of £100 and blown £200. I have lost solidly for a week and, determined to get the money back, stuck far more on a nag than sense dictated and lost that, too. And - this presumably is the clincher - not only do I subscribe to Racing UK so that I can watch racing every day, I have also been known - horror of horrors - to have a bet every day.

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Talking Politics

I was on Radio 4's Talking Politics yesterday, on a panel talking about Israel and the Middle East. You can hear it here. The link lasts until next Saturday.

(By the way, my fellow panellist, Tim Llewellyn, is blandly described in the intro as a writer. He was, of course, for many years a BBC correspondent in the Middle East. What a surprise - not - that he should now be a professional Israel-basher.)

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It'll come

Quicker reactions needed.

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