September 26, 2008

Blogroll

Some additions to the blogroll. So, welcome to:

26 Sep 2008 15:43:07 | Weblogs

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Bailout Politics So, no deal in Washington. NYT account here; WaPo here. Politico's story contains this detail that, unsurprisingly, has been making waves: According to one GOP lawmaker, some House Republicans are saying privately that they’d rather “let the markets crash” than sign on to a massive bailout. “For the sake of the altar of the free market system, do you accept a Great Depression?” the member asked. Well. I hadn't realised that was the choice. House Republicans are obviously being blamed for the impasse, but I rther think there are plenty of Democrats who will be content enough with the current state of play. They don't like this either. Certainly they don't like it enough to risk going ahead without GOP votes to give them political cover. As a senior Democratic leadership aide told me yesterday, the plan was to treat the bail-out as though it were a vote to award Congress a pay rise. Let's have 110 of your guys and 110 of our chaps and we'll all hold hands and jump together. The general view, I think, was that "This thing is a flaming pile of shit, but we have to do it." Trouble is: Congressmen are wary of...
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Gordon Brown is Jimmy Carter Sure, his conference speech tried to meld elements from both the McCain and Obama campaigns, but the Prime Minister's micro-management and control-freakery is more reminiscent of the poor old Georgian peanut farmer. Consider this telling anecdote from Martin Kettle's column in the Guardian today: And then there's the dysfunctionality in Downing Street itself. The briefing and counter-briefing these days make journalism easy. A few weeks ago, one official confided an extraordinary story to me. Four years ago, ministers decided that Britain's South Atlantic island possession of St Helena needed to have an airport. If planes could land on the tiny island, more than 1,200 miles from the nearest continent, its economic and demographic decline could perhaps be turned around. Plans began to be made. The airport was scheduled to open in 2010. Earlier this year, the Foreign Office finally asked the Department for International Development to sign off on the airport. The file went up to the secretary of state, Douglas Alexander. But instead of giving the go-ahead himself, Alexander was required to pass the decision up to Downing Street. Brown insisted on reading all the papers in the St Helena file and afterwards asked personally to see all the...

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