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Diary of a Notting Hill nobody

Tamzin Lightwater

Wednesday, 17th September 2008

Tamzin Lightwater's unique take on the week

Monday

This is ridiculous. I can’t be expected to understand the Labour leadership rules and off-balance-sheet arrangements.

I’ve told Nigel it’s composite motions or derivatives, not both. My head won’t stand it. For the life of me I can’t see how something worth £738 billion can also be worth £36.8 billion. Wonky Tom says it’s simple: ‘The fair value is smaller than the notional amount.’ He may as well be saying ‘la la la la la elephants in pink pants’.

It’s days like these I feel sure I should have stuck it out at the gallery and got married. I suppose I could try and keep my head down until the markets recover and General Well-Being is back on the agenda. But what if we can’t afford GWB any more? Like green taxes. I used to enjoy briefing our Fairer Skies document, or Greener Grass, or whatever it was called. Those were the days, eh? Still, at least I’ve got Operation Palin to get on with.

Tuesday

Just spotted my cousin Laurence on TV carrying a cardboard box out of Lehmans. Felt a bit scared. The recession is getting closer. Daddy was panicking this morning about the cost of horse feed. If he even talks about selling Sesame, I will leave home. No, I will leave the country. Laurence selling his Porsche is one thing. But the very idea of selling ponies! It just isn’t decent. And all this talk of people in Kensington giving their poodles away. I can’t bear it! Didn’t really need another talk from Dave about the dangers of complacency. Could have done with one about the dangers of desperation.

What’s the point of having a Conservative government in 2010 if we’re all going to be so poor we have to sell our animals? We need to do something now, before any more innocent pet-owners in SW7 go to the wall. Might work up a memo.

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A child of our time

From the economic and psychological bedlam of the global downturn has emerged a particularly dangerous false dichotomy: namely, that there is somehow a choice for ministers over the next few years between economic reconstruction and the repair of Britain’s broken society, and that the government (whether Labour or Conservative) must prioritise the former at the expense of the latter.

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‘A money-financed tax cut is essentially equivalent to Milton Friedman’s famous “helicopter drop” of money.’ So said Ben Bernanke, now the chairman of the Fed, in a speech about how to ward off the ‘extremely small’ chance of deflation, which he delivered in 2002.