Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain

Just saw the last episode of the 2007 series, broadcast in May-June of that year. Can't help but think the upbeat ending on accumulated wealth would be a fair bit different if it was made 6 months later.

Good to see a recap of the New Labour ambition of a "new" Britain. Exactly in the same vein as the Tory's current fix "broken society", only with a naiver audience to thrust it upon. Also a younger Peter Mandelson's declaration that he wishes to control the media after they have been giving Labour such a hard time for years...

Barclays Profits

Chris Dillow writes an interesting take on Barclays profit figures for the past year, something in the region of £11.46bn. Pitting the measure of profits against its assets. Whilst a little crude, I take his point which he best summed up in the later comment:

"I don't think it's wrong, therefore, to look at total assets. After all, if a firm isn't using these to make money, why does it have them?"

MPs Expenses - Scratchcard Economics

From BBCLauraK on twitter:

Legg report cost more than taxpayer will get back from MP s who are repaying-cost 1.16m, demands for cash back are 1.12m

So the important thing is that we had fun while performing the activity.

Gunning for Bercow

Just watching Prime Minister's Questions. In case anyone has forgotten the point of this weekly exercise, it is the short time MPs get to bring the PM and his/her government to account. The Speaker is the only person in the House that can interrupt proceedings and therefore the only person who can make the Prime Minister answer the question being asked.

This is the only thing that the public care about the speaker doing. In answer to David Cameron's last question asking why Gordon Brown is now advancing the alternative vote system the PM is rambling on irrelevantly about Tories and the hereditary principle. The Opposition benches are naturally raucous as the Prime Minister is completely out of line. The Speaker steps up to, quite rightly, tell the Conservatives to shut up so the PM can be heard.

What he should have done was tell the PM to answer the question asked while he was at it. PMQs is not a monologue. Bercow has failed already on what he needs to do. He has a few weeks to improve. And I hope he does or he should lose his seat to Nigel Farage of UKIP.