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The Spectator’s Notes

Charles Moore

Wednesday, 11th June 2008

Charles Moore's reflections on the week

It is interesting, but not surprising, to read that there now seems to be much more oil in the North Sea than previously thought. Whenever there is a big rise in oil prices, people say that the world supply will soon be exhausted. (This was a great theme in the 1970s.) But then the high price makes bolder forms of exploration more promising, and new sources begin to gush forth. It must, in principle, be the case that the earth does not contain limitless supplies of oil, but doomsayers consistently underrate the market’s way of ensuring the production of whatever it seeks.

Thinking of scarcity, who would have thought, at almost any previous time in British history, that straw would be hard to come by? Yet so it now is. We grow strawberries which, as their name suggests, benefit from straw. When they are grown commercially these days, they are more commonly planted on artificial, weed-resistant fabric, but we did not want this because slugs lurk beneath it, and we are persecuted by slugs (we caught 160 slugs in our small beer-based slug-trap in one night last week). Besides, we want the strawberries to put out runners and spread, which the fabric forbids. It is hard to get straw from farms because very few people now find it worth their while to produce what you or I would think of as a typical, small bale — contractors come in and make huge bales for silage. My wife therefore asked for straw from the local garden centre. She was told that it was rationed. We were allowed one bale only, and had to pay £3. Soon, instead of being a joke object clamped in the teeth of a yokel, straw will be a rare, exquisite fashion accessory, to be worn like an orchid.

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Ross Burns

June 17th, 2008 12:35am

In the last sentences of Charle Moore's recent Notes, he explains about the scarcity of straw. Surely someone of Charle's repute and good standing within his town would be gifted some straw by a local farmer friend. If that really cannot happen, then, indeed, something like a straw hat will replace the vulgar expensive hand bag as a front page must- have. You can only slowly shake your head.

Politics

Fraser Nelson

Fraser Nelson reviews the week in politics

The Spectator's Notes

Charles Moore

‘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.