You say Keynes, I say potato

Admittedly I can’t recollect much about the Keynesian economics I was taught at school; the little I remember revolved around the idea of flattening out the peaks and troughs, running a surplus through the ‘good’ times and thus having money for ‘infrastructure’ investment during the ‘bad’. But there were two fundamental problems I had with this as a teenager and they are the same two problems I have today:

If investment in infrastructure is required, what has this to do with any economic cycle? Are we saying we should time any such expenditure accordingly? That doesn’t seem likely. Or are we to invest in something that normally we wouldn’t consider? That doesn’t seem sensible.

My main concern however was more human; I couldn’t envisage any government being able to show the self-restraint necessary during the boom years to run a surplus. The previous government proved this point chillingly by gorging through tax receipts during the larger part of the last decade, and still managing to build up debt to eye-watering levels.

But having a dig at Labour, fun though it is isn’t what I wanted to get off my chest; it’s the continued use of the ‘Keynesian’ adjective. To be valid, this is a qualifier that can only be applied to an extended period of time over which there has been both ‘more’ and ‘less’ expenditure, otherwise it’s… well, fluffy nonsense used to justify spending money we haven’t got on things we don’t need. Talk of ‘Keynesian-style’ investment is gibberish because of what has, or rather hasn’t, gone before; I may as well take a fiscal contraction during the 1980’s of Margaret Thatcher and call it Keynesian; and I can’t imagine anyone arguing that.

Our Lord, Ferguson

Whereas I can easily pin-point the moment when athletics died, with Ben Johnson in 1988, football isn’t so easy to discard - the nonsense off the field is part of the drama, hell I miss Jose Mourinho, but I doubt I’ll ever miss Alex Ferguson. I couldn’t care less about mind games, they’re puerile and a fall-back for lazy journalism, but I do care about the use of debatable decisions to question the integrity of others.

…you want a fair referee. You want a strong referee anyway and we didn't get that. I don't know why he's got the game. I must say that when I saw who was refereeing it, I feared the worst.

Last season Ferguson received a two match touchline ban (with another two suspended) and a £20,000 fine for questioning the fitness of the referee Alan Wiley. Doubtless the defence for his attack on Martin Atkinson will be a couple of controversial incidents that went against Manchester United, a defence that is completely irrelevant. It’s OK to say the referee made a mistake, but it is simply not acceptable to say the referee made a mistake and from this insinuate that he is corrupt. More than that, it’s pathetic. Doubtless he’s already forgotten Wayne Rooney’s deliberate elbow in the head of Wigan’s James McCarthy – the assertion that there “was nothing in it” was absurd. One hopes the Football Association will pull their finger out, put the boot in, and inflict a punishment appropriate for a repeat offender.

A kind of subject

So I use the Chrome browser and have done ever since it came out. It has a clean interface, it's beautifully simple to use and it's as fast as they claim; on those occasions when I open Firefox - for the "what does this look like in other browsers" test - I find myself drumming my fingers waiting for it to load.

I particularly like the Gmail desktop notifications that Google now support for their browser. I might as well comment on the online music business as to Google's use of HTML5, but what it has impressed on me is that slow move away from applications running on a desktop operating system, to those running on the web. At home I've recently found myself closing Outlook and keeping the browser open - and of course that's what Microsoft is afraid of.

The wild west

Desperate to find something to keep me occupied, after dropping the family off to see Joseph! at the Bristol Hippodrome (I wasn’t desperate enough to join them), I remembered there was a cinema entrenched within Cabot Circus. It had “de Lux” in the name, it was showing True Grit and best of all it had an online booking service - I wouldn’t have to talk to anyone.

But the online booking service wasn’t working so I took a chance with the 24 hour booking line; (I thought) all you have to do is press numbers. Alas, whilst that’s enough for Barclays it’s not enough to book a film and I was obliged to speak to the software on the other end. It was a short conversation:

Good afternoon and welcome… If, for example, you are calling for the Showcase cinema in Birmingham, simply say Birmingham, otherwise please say which Showcase cinema you are calling for.

Bristol.

I’m not sure if you mean the Showcase cinema in Cabots Circus, Bristol City centre or… Leeds.

Then I remembered I'd been using Chrome earlier; maybe I should try the old-timer, good old Internet Explorer, still good for something… and my ticket was booked.

All I needed was a cover story. It’s easier than explaining to Little Miss R why she can’t watch certain films, Black Swan was bad enough, and since she holds back from talking to people she doesn’t know - can’t imagine where she gets that from - I decided to meet a friend.

What’s his name?

Oh… ummm… Rooster Cogburn.

And then I added:

He probably looks a little different to how I remember.

Yet despite being a Coen brothers production, this new version is reassuringly familiar. It’s more subtle than I expected, the guys in black are mostly a shade of grey, and surviving, like the rest of us.

The changing face of the BBC

Some, admittedly enjoyable, mealy-mouthed nonsense from the BBC today; from a report on Iranian warships entering the Suez Canal on their way to the Mediterranean:

Israeli [sic] considers Iran a threat because of its controversial nuclear programme, development of ballistic missiles, support for Lebanese and Palestinian militant groups, and promises to destroy Israel.

It was at least an honest, albeit rushed, assessment; I particularly like how Iran’s well documented threat to 'wipe Israel off the map' is added almost as an afterthought. Later in the day, however, the report was amended to:

Israel considers Iran a threat because of its controversial nuclear programme, development of ballistic missiles, support for Lebanese and Palestinian militant groups, and Tehran's repeated anti-Israel rhetoric.

So “promises to destroy Israel” becomes “anti-Israel rhetoric”. You know, I’ve occasionally used anti-German rhetoric when they beat us at football (so every few years), but really...

You are here

Artist: Little Miss Ruse, aged nine.

What is the NHS?

Close to where I live sits a cottage hospital. I have no idea what services it provides, how many people use it or how much it costs. Nor I suspect does anyone else. Regardless, I am quite sure that were an attempt made to close it the whole community would be ‘up in arms’, and before asking any of these questions. Similarly, it reminds me of a discussion I had many years ago with a friend who opined that nurses deserved ‘far more’ than they were getting paid, without even knowing how much they were getting paid. I didn’t either, but you’d have thought one statement would be predicated by the other.

That’s the thing about the National Health Service, it seems to exist in a logic-free vacuum; our relation to the institution is entirely emotional and our love measured in how many hospitals we build to house the 1.7 million people in its service. As the NHS website tells us:

Only the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, the Wal-Mart supermarket chain and the Indian Railways directly employ more people.

They’re so proud of this it’s stated before the rather more relevant figure of how many patients they treat. It does at least explain the reaction of various Guardianistas to GP commissioning, where one concern would seem to be that GPs may on occasion choose private service providers because they’re… er… cheaper. This is apparently a bad thing; why, the next thing you know they’ll be closing state-funded hospitals in favour of privately run alternatives, and then how will we show our love?

I’m not for one instant suggesting the NHS should morph into a commission only service, we need an element of state provision to keep the private sector honest, but regardless of the provider, to the patient the service remains free - albeit paid for through tax. What kind of hospital he or she ends up in is irrelevant, all we should really care about is the cost. The cheaper it is, the more we can treat; now remind me, just who is the NHS for?