Great post of Dan Lockton‘s about what demand for energy actually is. Amory Lovins’ remark that no-one wants “energy”, they want cold beer, is of course another version of this. Which, once it had got together with this story about financing solar installation and marinated nicely in my del.icio.us queue for a while, made me…
Read More a question of demandDo you know those TV adverts for getting a really big loan to pay off all the other loans, with blue water and pretty girls, and very small print? Debt consolidation. That’s Francis Maude. That’s his job. One of Prestbury’s appointed representatives, Clear Mortgages, encouraged customers to “mortgage up to the hilt in Spain” on…
Read More Francis Maude: Toxic PusherTories. I’m in full agreement with Matthew here; I really suspect that the mood music about “austerity” (plays well with the demographics) and “IMF” is actually preparing the ground for the Conservatives to pull a deliberate financial freakout once in office. Osborne has been pushing a line that We Have No Idea How Bad It…
Read More Osborne goes cap in hand to the IMFIs neurogenesis perhaps the most interesting scientific discovery of the times? I rather think it is. The government minister’s version: until quite recently, we thought that once you passed a certain early age, that was it for your supply of neurons, and you would only lose them. Paradoxically, that wasn’t incompatible with learning, as ones…
Read More insane in the membrane, insane in the brain!China’s top climate change negotiator wants the Chinese export sector to be excluded from their targets, and “consumers to pay” instead. This is not good news. For a start, the tactics. It means accepting the principle of letting some special interests off. We know, after all, that there will be the mother of all lobbying…
Read More gaseous GoodhartI’m increasingly annoyed by official-media consensus that young people will suffer more than anyone else from the recession. Not that I especially doubt this; I doubt the reasoning, which appears to be that they’ve all gone soft and they’re not like we were in my day. As a general principle, I believe this is usually…
Read More you can’t blame the youth of todaySo Shriti Vadera thinks there are signs of improvement in the economy. The Tories have messed themselves, predictably. Hey, she rationalised the railways. But there are good reasons to think this: there are indicators. Notably, the spread – the difference in interest rates – between blue-chip and risky commercial paper is narrowing sharply. Similarly, the…
Read More reasons to be cheerful, part 3OK, the last post wasn’t totally serious. But is it too much to say that John Redwood is back? He’s been given a committee to chair, which sounds like a kick to touch, but we live in committee times. The Government is handling the economic crisis through a combination of outside committee-ists and a civil…
Read More the time has come to shoot you downVery experienced soldiers don’t like robots. I suppose you could ascribe this to conservatism, but then, the last eight years have been a global crash course in how people who tell you that this war will be different to what the old sergeants think are wrong. Meanwhile, at Canon’s main factory in Japan, the workers…
Read More here, robot!No wonder the Indy‘s moving in with the Daily Mail; it’s taken to publishing leaders like this one, a crude bit of hard right culture war stuff which blames the Sharon Matthews case on “welfare”. Yes, really. They also rehearse the old Peter Lilley thing about “single mothers who get pregnant just to jump the…
Read More The Independent: Is Over