Why I am Labour #1 in a series

We are in a recession, Labour has changed the rules on Housing and Council Tax Benefits to give some of the poorest families up to £20.00 a week more. So I'd guess more than twice that many kids will be a little better off.

More than 200,000 working families will gain about £1000 a year, thanks to new rules around Housing and Council Tax Benefits, making them an average of £20 a week better off.

Good say's I - and I don't believe the Tories would have done that. In fact we pretty much know they wouldn't - they will cut government spending on the day they take office (heavens forfend).

Comment here full details (with pros and some cons) here

Marathons

Meb Keflezighi has just won the 2009 NY Marathon in 2:09:15. From the FAQs on his website, we learn he has been a professional runner for 10 years.

When did you decide you wanted to become a professional runner?

a. 1997, after doubling in the 5k and 10k in the NCAA outdoor championships.

Ron Hill was the first person to get under 2:10. He did it 39 years ago winning the Commonwealth Games title in Edinburgh. He had a full time job and was working on building up a shoe and clothing importing business at the time. (Part of his training was running to and from work and his firm thought it was outrageous of him to ask to put in a shower at work at his own expense.)

Which is not to take anything away from Meb like - just saying ...

Albatross chicks killed by plastic

From Chris Jordan. Not pretty and this is his intro to the photos:

These photographs of albatross chicks were made just a few weeks ago on Midway Atoll, a tiny stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific. The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking.

To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, not a single piece of plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the actual stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world's most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent.

Some commentary here, but the above - and the photos - say it all, really.

Open University's iSpot website identifies moth never seen before in UK

Anyone can post pictures of wildlife or plants they've seen on the OU's iSpot website. If you don't know what you've found you can ask an expert. In this case, somebody did just that on behalf of their 6 year old and the answer was - a moth that had never been seen in this country before.

The site is funded from the National Lottery BTW.

Cameron - says one thing, did another ...

From DC's speach to his Party's Conference:

To the young mum working part time, trying to earn something extra for her family “from every extra pound you earn we’ll take back 96 pence.”

Yes, 96 pence.

Let me say that again, slowly.

In Gordon Brown’s Britain if you’re a single mother with two kids earning £150 a week the withdrawal of benefits and the additional taxes mean that for every extra pound you earn, you keep just 4 pence.

Full text here

Response?

... in 1998 (a year after the Tories were removed from power) there were 130,000 families facing marginal deduction rates (the technical definition) of over 90 per cent.

That has fallen to 60,000 thanks to the minimum wage, tax credits and lower income tax.

In fact, in 1998 there were 5,000 families facing 100 per cent deduction rates. Every £1 they earned was then taken in tax. The number is now more or less zero. (See page 90 of the Red Book for full details).

via The Financial Times, here

What God thinks about money

The Archbishop of Canterbury ("The ABC" to we Anglicans), speaking again about bankers - their lack of remorse for what they have so recently done, their greed, failure to recognise their failings - and their rapid return to top-level remuneration whilst poorer working folk pay for their unprecedented incompetences speaks of:

the... diffused resentment, that people are somehow getting away with a culture in which the connection between the worth of what you do and the reward you get becomes more obscure.

Or, as my gran used to say:

You can tell what God thinks about money when you loook at the kind of people he gives it to.

The Audenshaw Two are freed ...

After the verdicts, Mr Carus was scathing about the prosecution case and said the teenagers should have just been given "a slap on the wrists".

"I think this was an unnecessary, heavy-handed prosecution against two young lads who could have been dealt with in a more sensitive way.

"As the jury's verdict demonstrates, this was a waste of public money, hundreds of thousands of pounds.

"Bearing in mind their ages it's farcical to think that this was ever a serious design."

And the kids have spent 6 months in prison. And two police officers had to fly to Colorado to interview the lead detective on the Columbine Massacre case.

No explosives or firearms were discovered following the arrest of the teenagers in March, which came after Ross McKnight made a drunken phone call to a female friend boasting about carrying out Project Rainbow.

Hmmmm.

Local MP Anne Snelgrove reports

13 organisations have taken part in the bid through the Council including the Salvation Army, Lawn Community Centre, Wiltshire Wildlife Trust and Swindon 105.5 Community Radio.

In total, 92 jobs will be created with £598,000 of funding from the Government.

Which is good - good that 92 new jobs have been created and good in that the SallyArmy, Wiltshire Wildlife Trust and the Community Centre round the corner are going to get things done that they wouldn't otherwise.

If you can think of any jobs that are needed and want to help out locally, try the Future Jobs Fund - takes about 10mins to read the bumf.

Killer tits

Reports of Great Tits killing pipistrelle bats in a cave in Hungary over a period of ten years - suggesting that this is learned behaviour (over how many generations?) perhaps following an opportunistic killing by a single individual?

Darren Naish, in this article, identifies reports of similar behaviour going back to the 19th Century.

Audenshaw High - my alma mater

According to the BBC a couple of pupils (from my home town, as well) said they wanted to blow it up. Not much changes then.

Obviously this is just day one of the case and more may well (better had) come to light. But so far we have a couple of teenagers feeling nobody loves or understands them; deciding they want to be famous like Tim McVeigh; saying really bad things about school like "I'd like to blow the place up" and one of their mates tells the police, and the police find out one of them has searched the Web using phrases like "how to blow up school" and they'd picked a date and everything ... Surely there's got to be more to it than that - sacks of fertiliser in the potting shed, that sort of thing.

Then again, had they been Asian, I guess they'd already be inside.

Back in my day there was a mock-hanging where the one being hung kicked over the desk, dropped, pulled down the light fittings which shorted through the metal runners of the desks before blowing the fuse. Police turned up, spoke with the Head and departed. No more said. (Head got a bit cross I think.)

Mind you, in those days it was a Grammar school - that's the difference, see?

All The News That's Free To Read

They want us to pay for news:

"Rupert Murdoch said earlier this year his News Corp. media empire would begin charging for online content on its portfolio of titles including The Wall Street Journal, the London Times and the New York Post" - see CNN.

Publishing news via dead trees was losing both sales and advertising long before the recession. IMHO we are seeing the end of a once successful business model - and maybe desperate attempts to try to change reality to fit a re-hash of the same model. People pay to buy a newspaper; they read news from the same news-gathering organisation that sells newspapers on the streets for free online so maybe that's why they're buying fewer papers. And that's hurting business so we make them pay to read online in the same way we make them pay to read on paper. Yes? No?

I'd say "No". One obvious problem is that unless all news outlets switch to "pay for content" at the same time those that don't will get more clicks, therefore get more advertising revenue. Conversely those switching will inevitably loose visitors - so loosing advertising revenue and becoming more dependent on income from charging - and into a rising charge spiral. One very big competitor that is very unlikely to charge is the BBC. Hence, (or am I being cynical?) the attack on said organ by Murdoch fils in Edinburgh - and the subsequent free and frank exchange of views with Robert Peston

But I reckon I'm a pretty average news punter. I click on sites from different countries to get a quick feel for what today's agenda is there (US, germany, Canada ...); if there's a topic of the moment, I have a quick look for it on left, right, and foreign news sites. But that's what it is - a quick: click, yeah, yeah, la-di-da, different angle, that's not what the last one said - and off. 5-10 seconds each I'd guess. Am I going to pay for that? No way.

But Murdoch misses a big point. The fewer news outlets are free, the more I'll use the BBC - but not just because it's free, more because I trust it in a way I do not trust News Corp or any other commercial news site that is almost forced to pick and slant its news with one eye on a powerful "Big Man" and the other on what the advertisers expect. Free news on the Web lets me compare. If I can't compare I'll look for impartiality. But there's more.

Even the very idea of "news" and news gathering is changing - has changed. What grips me more: News Corp passing on the official line on the Iraq war? Embedded reporters saying what they're allowed to say about what they're allowed to see? Or click on Where Is Raed? I can read The Baghdad Blogger's latest post telling me where the missiles hit, what people in Baghdad are saying, how daily life is changing - and then send him a question by mail and get a reply. What can News Corp (or the BBC) offer to compete with that? Where do you think I went first for news of the Iraq war? What engaged me most and made me think most? Who do you think I believed?

Microsoft's Polish Photoshop Disaster

Thanks to Bob Piper for pointing to one of the best PSDs ever. It says so much about so many things and it's so funny: the Apple Mac (in a MS ad?), the unconnected screen, the hand - the hand! the hand! look at the hand! ...

Is it true everything's so much lighter in Poland?

ROFLMAO

Lord Mandelson goes with the flow - BBC reports

Lord Mandelson, who is also the First Secretary of State, underwent surgery at St Mary's Hospital, west London, on Friday and remained there overnight.

He said he was "very proud to be an NHS patient" and thanked staff as he left...

As he left hospital, Lord Mandelson said: "I have been treated really well... everything is now flowing extremely well. Actually I have had a jolly time."

(My emphasis) sans comment.

Holiday time? - visit Jersey before it shuts ...

The Channel Islands are coming under pressure from HMRC for abusing a VAT concession and doing us out of over £100m of tax income. The main target seems to be Guernsey in this case (see the Guardian) but Jersey is feeling the heat as an identified secrecy jurisdiction - basically allowing itself to be used for hiding money from other governments

Richard Murphy has been on to this for a long time and also predicted the current budget crisis the island is facing:

Tow final thoughts: first they can find only £6 million of cuts in response to this – about 1% of spending. And apparently this includes such things as cutting baby milk in their maternity unit! I think this a significant indicator of what will happen in the UK – talk of 15% cuts is ludicrous – they just aren’t there to be had. Second, they are saying the obvious response is new taxes and charges. Sorry to brag again, but I told them that in face to face discussion with Senator Le Sueur – their first minister – way back in 2005.

More here

Jersey has also been in the news because of a number of child abuse cases there. Senator Stuart Syvret has been blogging furiously for a long time, consistently claiming that abuse of various kinds was - and is - prevalent on the island and is being covered up by the authorities. Indeed, that a number of politicians and officials are directly involved in the abuse. He has been accused by the same First Minister Le Sueur that Richard Murphy spoke with of bullying Jersey officials and threatened with some kind of disciplinary action. Richard Murphy is an accountant, Senator Syvret is not - and uses more direct language in his response to the First Minister:

You - Senator Le Sueur - are simply t oo weak, unprincipled and spineless to exhibit the necessary leadership required to safeguard the public good, and deal with these people.

The actions of you, the rest of the Council of Ministers and certain civil servants being a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, and misconduct in a public office.

The letter you have sent to me - in which you are seeking to engineer my silence, so that criminal acts continue to be concealed, is another example of that criminal conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

... I hereby give notice that I am going to initiate civil legal proceedings against the Council of Ministers, certain senior civil servants, and others - for a variety of wrongs committed against me - and will be seeking substantial personal damages.

Naturally, you will not wish to accept culpability, so the matter will go to a full civil trial. And so broad will be the issues at contention - that a great deal of 'discovery' will be necessary. Incidentally, the parameters of discovery are far wider in civil actions than in criminal actions.

The civil trial will also present a huge, over-arching public advantage - in that very many of the survivors will have their day in court - and a great deal of the truth will emerge. Indeed, perhaps even one or two witnesses who recall very clearly being savagely beaten with a rod by a certain former teacher at De La Salle.

Now, for all I know, Senator Syvret is deluded, bears a grudge, is lying through his teeth - whatever. But he doesn't come across that way to me. Please read his blog here and make up your own mind. If nothing else, you could be in at the start of something that could be quite big.

And if much of this is true, try a holiday in Jersey as soon as you can - before it shuts.

Bones To The Stones

I've been to a couple of the local breakdance competitions - this one was Bones To The Stones in beautiful downtown Swindon. With dancers and supporters coming from along the M4 and down the old A419 from Cheltenham (they have some good dancers there).

It was a good scene. Firstly I've never seen a friendlier competitive event - with competitors genuinely supporting and applauding each other's efforts.

The specatators were interesting too ...



Breakdancing attracts young (teens/early 20s) males and their partners, mates mates' partners from all backgrounds. I don't remember seeing such a racial mix around Swindon in such a small group. Like I said - marvellous atmosphere. Not a harsh word: lots of laughs, cheers, applause not a negative in sight.

Thing is as well - it's all organised by the breakers themselves - they know each other, have contacts with other groups in other towns, they're there because they want to be. All they need is to be given a bit of space (little-used bit of shopping mal floor by the Big Screen in this case. They do their own organising.


Good dancing too (scares the wotsit out of me mind).

Prophetic or what

Just the post before last I was writing about people having heart-related problems whilst running (well - death, really) and achilles tendon problems and how I never had them. Blow me if I don't start with sore tendons the day after and then the French Pres goes and has a funny turn whilst out running. Uncanny. Could've been worse though - might have been the other way round.
I reckon my tendon problems are dow to lawn mowing. Have to pack that in I think.

Grammar Schools

Chris Dillow has a posting on Stumbling and Mumbling about Grammar Schools. There's some good links and I guess the general theme is that there are rsearch findings for and against but few or none finding dramatic differences.

I went to a Grammar School in Manchester in the 1950s. A couple of years back I met up with someone I'd known since I was 5. We were at his house and he brought out the old School Photo Album from our primary school days. We showed the kids us in short pants, reminisced a bit and followed our younger selves through 6 years.

The first photo was a reception class - huge, the picture filled with toothy kids faces. Three or four months later the reception class split into 4 streams. Ours was the 'top' stream. The smallest. He asked if I noticed anything significant about the kids in our class. I'd looked at the same photos lots of times and yes - two things seemed to mark us out. One - we were better dressed. Now you have to remember, this was Manchester - and not the posh end - but we were, by and large better dressed. My socks were darned, but I didn't have many visible patches on my clothes. Kids who ended up in the lower grades generally did have patched clothes, obvious hand-me-downs and so on. The second difference I noticed was that we were taller as a group and the difference was especially noticeable between top and bottom classes. So those were two things I'd noticed - and reflected on from time to time.

My old mate though had gone on to become an academic. He listened to me, nodded, and then pointed out the obvious thing. So obvious I'd never even given it a thought - the same group of kids stayed together almost intact all the way through the school. None joined the class: one, two, three maybe, left for a 'lower' class. One did so and came back the next year (my mate). Next we went through the final-year photo and worked out where we'd all ended up. Grammar school - almost every one of us. One or two we couldn't be sure about. None we could say definitely went to the local Secondary Modern.

Chris Dillow says of one of his sources:

Atkinson, Gregg and McConnell estimate that 11-year-olds of high ability who are so poor that they are eligible for free school meals are only half as likely to get into grammar schools as those who aren’t eligible for them.

Know what I think? They had no chance from the day they walked into their primary school. Those like me who 'passed the eleven plus' were picked out, put in small classes and coached to pass. The others weren't. If my experience is at all typical - and I'd bet it is - then I reckon selection for Grammar School happens not at 11+, but at 5. And it's done by the primary school teachers.

Could be some worthwhile research out there around that sort of thing I guess.

Runners - dead and very much alive

The excuse for the BBC article (link above) is that it's 25 years since Jim Fixx died whilst out running. He came to running late and was apparently motivated to run by the fact that his father died early. According to the article, he would have been better off having a cholestorol test. However, he did outlive his father by a number of years and wrote the book (The Complete Runner) that's credited with starting the jogging boom, originally in the States, later over here.

I knew the guy who translated The Complete Runner from American into English. He was given a proof copy to write his comments on. One short comment accompanied Fixx's assertion that if you have achilles tendon problems you should stop running on soft surfaces. The comment was "Bollocks!!" On being told he and the publisher would be going through the book personally with Fixx, he changed it to "Interestingly, this is exactly the opposite to the advice most British runners would give."

Dr Ron, meanwhile is now 70 and currently running out in Greece, having flogged another of his businesses off. I remember his first business venture - selling shoes from a trestle table after road races. Ron designed shoes for Reebok (he initiated the reflective tab idea IIRC) and was the first person to import shoes into the UK from a small US manufacturer - Nike.

RandsInRepose

Just stumbled across this guy (click on the title) whilst looking for something completely different - as one does. His latest post hits a number of quite different buttons for me, and passes the supreme test of "would I take the trouble to stand next to this person in a pub and be keen enough to engage him in conversation that I would buy him a pint?"

... teamwork — teams of people actually working together — is kind’a magical.

Listen, it takes all I can muster to get along with my brother who I’ve known my entire life, so the fact that a group of people sitting in close proximity to each other can build a product without killing each other is a fucking miracle.

It’s not actually a miracle. It’s years of practice, starting in elementary school where you learned the basics: raise your hand when you want to speak, say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, and don’t eat the glue.

He's American of course, but then so many people are.

Garbage, tax, Economics ... oooh ... sex-ey.

Are the plates shifting? Might there, just possibly, be one of those "ideas who's time has come" moments close by? I only ask because just today 2 or 3 interesting little bleeps started maybe floating towards the same destination on the old radar.

Tim Bray points us at a suggestion from David Eaves, a political activist in his home city of Vancouver about garbage (rubbish!) and freeing local govt information up - with a number of credible benefits to local citizens and the City. David Eaves may not be well known outside his bit of Vancouver, but Tim Bray certainly is, and is taking an interest, and he has the skills and contacts to make the garbage information ideas work (they don't sound as though they need super-powers anyway). So, nice but maybe a bit parochial - but then again, sometimes, "once you start thinking like that ...". Hmmm...

And (but) then, from a completely different direction we have Richard Murphy - who's blog is very influencial in it's own right - but he's also a TV pundit, writes for, and more significantly advises, newspapers and TV on tax matters. He's also a key member of Tax Justice Network and his (and their) ideas and agenda, having been classified as "worthy - but no hope" by many people is moving significantly mainstream. Now he wants to invent a new Economics .

Garbage, Economics, tax ... oooh ... sex-ey.

Is Gordon B deluded? a liar? or good at maths?

Chris Dillow's blog (Stumbling and Mumbling see links) is always excellent.

Today, he gives a plausible explanation for Gordon B's apparently unfounded optimism (or 'lies' as followers of Wisteria Willy from Wantage would have us say ...) about government lending and his apparent belief that Labour will not (ok - may not) have to make Big Cuts.

The Big Idea is that the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement (about which we hear so much) is, by definition, equal and opposite to the Private Sector Lending Requirement (about which we hear so little). The PSLR is the net of private savings minus private borrowing. Currently that's well positive - because the Credit Crunch has ... well - crunched credit. So borrowing, mainly by business to fund growth and investment is way down and saving (largely by individuals? paying off credit cards rather than holidaying etc because they're scared?) is up. So private sector saving has grown rapidly over the past couple of years - and this has to mean equally rapidly growing public sector borrowing - which is exactly what is happening. See where this leading?

Dillow says:

Now, here’s the reason for optimism. As the credit crunch recedes, the private sector’s financial surplus will shrink as firms become freer to borrow. And the counterpart to this is that the public sector’s deficit will come down - possibly more quickly than the Red Book forecasts, and sufficiently quickly to avoid the need for big spending cuts.

Have to say Gordon does look surprisingly relaxed lately ... all things considered.

New shoes

Saucony Progrid Guide 2 - how impressive is that?
Third pair I've had. The name gets longer every time and I think I'm getting superstitious about them. Having been out for about 20 years because I couldn't run without pulling leg muscles or triggering plantar fasciitis: having seen my doctor, the hospital and a podiatrist all of whom said I pronated badly and needed support shoes I finally went to the nice man at my local running shop who put me in these - and who gets a plug

I've been running with little trouble for 18 months now. Currently up to 3 times a week, 40-odd minutes today. Not fast - but still.

Web of words ...

Tim Bray is usually worth listening to on things Webby issues (see blogroll "Ongoing" ). Generally he's thought about such things before he writes and he knows whereof he speaks. Today, he says:

The tree’s branches are real but only there to support the leaves. The sizzle is enticing but the steak is why you sit down. The eye candy is cool, but the Web is really about words, and mostly written words at that.

Full article here

Unexpected news

Mark Easton at the BBC reports on unexpected falls in the homelessness rate across England. Obviouusly this is unexpected - I guess everyone would expect homelessness to increase in a recession: but no. And the numbers aren't small - 15% fewer declaring themselves homeless; 26% fewer accepted as homeless.

Why? Tony Blair's former adviser Geoff Mulgan ... offered a more sociological explanation: that British people are more tolerant and generous when times are hard.

Well well. And you know - I think he just may be right.

Orchids on the tip

Meanwhile, earlier today at the Swindon end of the A419 a group of bee orchids to go with the common spotted ones at Clattinger Farm below. Clattinger's orchids are, of course, growing on their ancestral land - not so these. Bee orchids (I think) like disturbed ground. These are on a thin soil cap on top of an old tip between Nationwide and Intel and a short walk from Swindon's Old Town. So, one way or another, a recently introduced species I guess.

Will Hutton in The Observer has an interview with Paul Krugman today. He talks mainly about the global economic scene (he's pessimistic) but says these things about the UK:

WH: So, the United Kingdom might actually get through this in reasonably good shape?

PK: Yeah. That's why I've been watching with an outsider's slight puzzlement, your bizarre political circus.

WH: Darling and Brown deserve more credit than they're given?

PK: If the government can hold off having an election until next year, Labour might well be able to run as "we're the people who brought Britain out of the slump".

I don't know enough about the other aspects of politics, but I would guess that the option value is quite high that the economy might actually have turned a corner. That's unique. That's a uniquely British thing. None of the other G7 countries has anything like that.

I still think his [Gordon Brown's] economic policies have been pretty good. They really kind of lost their nerve on fiscal policy, but I do understand it's harder to do it here. I think the UK economy looks the best in Europe at the moment. I have no position on all of the crazy stuff. But I think the policies are intelligent. The fact of the matter is that Britain did manage to stabilise the banking situation. I'm not ecstatic, but I'm not sure I know what I could have done better.

The Nobel Prizewinner for Economics is not sure he knows what he could have done better than GB.

Full interview here.

Clattinger Farm

May and early June is the time to visit Clattinger Farm. According to the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust ...it is considered the finest remaining example of enclosed lowland grassland in the UK and is of international importance for its hay meadow wildflowers.



I'm sure they're right. And yet farms like this were the norm when I was a lad on the outskirts of Manchester. The local farmer used to let us kids play in his meadows after they'd cut the hay - and encouraged us to chuck it about. He said we helped dry it out. Well, I hope we did, but since then I've wonderd if he didn't just like to see bunches of kids rolling and squealing about on his land like so many escaped piglets.

He sold our mums milk as well, delivered from a horse-drawn float. And there's a very useful thing I remember it doing that a lorry or a van can't: as the farmer's lad picked a couple of handfuls of bottles from the float and clanked them down on the doorsteps, the horse would keep pace with him, but a little in front, and stop at the next customer's house ready for him grabbing another couple of deliveries.

Another useful thing horses can do that vans can't, of course, is have little horses.

That was then and this was a couple of weeks ago. With this years little Belted Galloways coming along nicely. Munching their way through orchids and suchlike. The place is a botanical wonderland no doubt, but on a sunny June day, what sane man wouldn't want to just lie in the grass and and remind himself that he belongs here just as much as the flowers and insects and birds; with the smells of land and animals and blossoms from the hedgerows? "I have arrived, I am home, in the here and the now ..." (And I know that is meant to apply to wherever one may find oneself - like a city street or at work. But this day 'here' was was especially 'home'.) And it was loverly.

David Cameron is appalled at himself

David is appalled at some of the expenses claims by Tory MPs and has announced he is going to make the offenders to repay the amounts in question. Highest placed Tory to feel his wrath is the Leader of the Opposition. He is appalled at his claim for 600 quid to clear wisteria off his chimney and is forcing himself to give the money back at once. Lesser-lights who might be next in line include:

Douglas Hogg, former Agriculture Minister, > £2,000 for the moat around his country estate to be cleared, also contributions to a full-time housekeeper(and her car) and for his piano to be tuned.

*David Davis, the former shadow Home Secretary, claimed more than £10,000 for home renovations and furnishings, including a new £5,700 portico, at his Yorkshire home.

*David Heathcoat-Amory, a former Minister for Europe, claimed for more than £380 of horse manure.

*Michael Ancram, the Marquess of Lothian and a former deputy Tory leader, claimed more than £14,000 a year in expenses while owning three properties, none of which have a mortgage and are worth an estimated £8m

- All published by the Daily Telegraph ...

I agree with David on this one.

Wonder how pleased he is with The Telegraph speculating that the recession may soon - may even now - be over?

Running

Last Thursday I finished a run and realised nothing had hurt. At all. It happened again on Saturday -when I ran around the lakes and the old Canal near South Cerney for 40-odd minutes. The sun was warm (not hot) on my back, butterflies fluttered by and I had to stop myself grinning lest fisherfolk and suchlike think I'm an eejit. Then I thought "Who cares?" and ran a mile-long grin with a definite little bounce in my stride.

Magic.

I declare this the official start of a pre-injury phase.

We're doing well - relatively

Brian Barder is someone I always read carefully - and trust. Here he is on the Credit Crunch, with lots of links ...

All the press loves a crisis: it sells papers. The Opposition loves a crisis: it attributes it to the government’s failure — sometimes correctly, sometimes not. The masochistic British in general are easily convinced by the right-wing tabloids and the rest of the Tory press, not to mention the CamerOsborne duo, that the UK is at the bottom of all the league tables, and heading rapidly for even lower places in them. So here are some facts and figures from recent publications of all shapes and sizes. I can’t vouch for any of them; for all I know, they have all been invented. But they’re perhaps better than nothing. Or are they? Anyway, here they are:

Read on at Brian's Blog

Brian says he can't vouch for any of them, but from a source that should know - and to put some human flesh on the numbers Spiegel tells me that:

A total of 1 million people get help every day from Germany's "Deutsche Tafel" food banks -- and that number is set to increase

A million Germans on food handouts - and we think things are bad here!

Easter, South Cerney

Down at the posh end of the A419 for Easter. To All Hallows in South Cerney for Sung Eucharist - a neat little village with a neat little village church. The church is Norman, a gem and amazingly unimproved. (They did put a steeple on top of the tower at one time - but it fell off.)

The church was near enough full with, I guess, a little over a hundred people. The singing was good, even from the congregation - as befits a parish that includes Down Ampney.

Not a joyful service for me I must admit, but that was a personal thing. I noticed someone a couple of pews in front put a comforting hand on a shoulder - and there were a few tears closer to. The big festivals still mark out the year for many people and we can't help thinking of those who were there last time - but never will be again.