Super Gordon!

According to Paul Krugman in the NYT Op Ed section this am .... Gordon Brown did good .... in fact he did exceptionlly good ....

"Has Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, saved the world financial system? ..... the Brown government has shown itself willing to think clearly about the financial crisis, and act quickly on its conclusions. And this combination of clarity and decisiveness hasn’t been matched by any other Western government, least of all our own."

Wow. He does make the point (quite a lot) that the UK is small fry on the economic stage as compared to the colossus that is the US .... but somehow our little nation stood tall and persuaded other world leaders to act not on ideology .... but instead to to look insightfully yet decisively into the abyss ...and actually do the right thing .....

The Guardian is less adulatory .... but flattering nonetheless .... holding its breath for a Labour revival .... and for a Brownian renaissance ....

As my mum would say .... silent waters run deep ....



Addendum: Just read that Krugman (of Princeton and the NYT column cited above was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics today ... so he must know what he is talking about ....)

Going for an English ....

No reason for this ... just reminescing after today's earlier post about how sublime GGM was ....

Curry is King .... or The Bhuna Bailout ....

Such is the craziness of this current end of days situation that all the papers today are carrying the story about how Gordon Brown went to bed early last night safe in the knowledge that the bank bailout would be smooth .... since Alistair Darling ordered a £245 curry takeaway from his favourite curryhouse for the Masters of the Universe that met with him in order to end this descent into chaos ....

As a proud card-carrying brown person ... i'm rather tickled that poppadoms and pickles were the sustenance for our 'saviours' .... no longer is it the beer and sandwiches of old Labour ... the caviar and chapampagne of the Tories .... or even fish and chips of the BNP .... chicken tikka masala - surely britain's greatest export - is the the flavour of the moment .... the stuff that society runs on when the going gets tough ....

I can only think of the classic Goodness Gracious Me sketch when the uncle claims everthing as Indian ....



But sadly ... it all leaves a rather nasty taste in the mouth (i'm loving this terrible punning) .... since the Labour spin machine just makes us wary that we're being purposefully manipulated into thinking
a) they're just normal people like any of us .... or
b) oooh look how multiculturally pc they are - please angry brown people don't hate us for branding you all as terrorists.... or ....
c) the discussions to avert the apocalypse took the form of a rather amiable curry on a kitchen table with Darling being in complete control and not a knife-edge debate on the coming of hell - oh-how-very-quirky-British-stiff-upper-lip-and-not-like-all-that-fuss-the-americans-made we are ... (actually the last one i rather like ... i mean really ... how nice and civilised that our politicians sorted the mess out over dinner and not with some nasty melodrama)

Of course .... it may just be that our Chancellor thinks best with a naan and tarka dal inside him ... and who am i to disagree ....

Naturally the papers are going wild about this tasty little tidbit ..... Hardeep Singh Kohli in the Guardian today is calling it the Bhuna Bailout in a rather saccharine coquettish piece comparing the banks and building societies to the nation's favourite dishes ...

To which one wit has commented ....

King Prawn Rogan Josh : £12.50
Poppadums : £5
Lamb curries : £40
Chicken curries : £30
Tandoori rotis : £20
The knowledge that you can distract the taxpayers with talk of curry while shafting them for £50 billion : Priceless
There are some things which money can't buy. For everything else there is the Guardian.

Amen.

Hitchens: piece in Slate

http://www.slate.com/id/2201622/

Hence the interview on Morning Joe ....

He argues in essence that we ought to exploit the opium harvest in Afghanistan to make actual opiate-bsed drugs (rather than funding Turkey to do this) ... and so stop the profits being diverted to the Taliban/Al Quaeda ....

At last intelligent practical thoughts about Afghanistan ... and the realisation that the strategies of Iraq cannot be exported there ....

Still .... could the yanks ever go for the War on Terror over the War on Drugs?

Christopher Hitchens kicking ass ....

Christopher Hitchens ... love him or loathe him (but i frankly adore him ...) .... has to be the only person who can turn up clearly hungover (if not still drunk) and yet still put on an acerbically brilliant performance ... even if you don't agree with him ....

He was masterful yesterday morning talking about the need for new thoughts on Afghanistan/Pakistan and the utter offensiveness of Sarah Palin ....

Maybe its just the effect of the british accent ... but i think he rocks ...