Why did they cut interest rates to 4.975%?

Lawks, crikey and cripes, I said to myself. While I was of the opinion that interest rates may have been held a little too high for too long (but frankly, I doubt a change will make much difference as long as Libor is out of control from the Bank of England's effects) I was surprised to hear that they had cut the borrowing rate by such a tiny amount.

I was, of course, incorrect. Or, to be more accurate, I was perfectly correct and every news reporting institution in the country was wrong. Every report all day yesterday reported quite clearly that

the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee has cut interest rates by half of one percent.

No they bloody didn't, you bag of muppets! Allow me to take you back to Elementary Mathematics 101.

• One-half of one percent of 5 is 0.025
• Therefore 5 - 0.025 = 4.975. This is what the interest rate would be with a 0.5% cut.
• The difference between 5 and 4.5 is 10% because, as every school boy knows (or at least they used to know: these days they probably don't) 10% of 5 is 0.5.

And 0.5 is exactly the drop in percentage points that the MPC cut interest rates by yesterday. Not 0.5%, but by 10%.

All broadcast media in the UK please take note. There are three ways you could have accurately reported this news:

• Interest rates have been cut by 0.5 percentage points to 4.5%
• Interest rates have been cut by 50 basis points to 4.5%
• Interest rates have been cut by 10% to 4.5%

All of these are correct. It is a small point, but it is important. Please get it right next time. I'd hate to think that all news agencies are as inaccurate when it comes to numerical business reporting as Newsnight. That would be very bad.

[/pedant]

Old Etonians, Conservatives and Homosexuals

Cripes, I never thought that would be a blog-post title. Some quip about all good people being at least two of those is forming in my mind, but I shan't burden you with it just now. Perhaps I should also add Church of England to that list. Anyway, onwards, Horatio, as someone once upon a time may or may not have said.

I've just spotted a wonderful quote in last week's Spectator. Opening the review to a new play which opened recently in London's Soho Theatre, Tory Boyz, Lloyd Evans begins:

The Conservatives were once a party of proud Etonians and closet homosexuals; now they're a party of closet Etonians and proud homosexuals.

Which lead to me pondering awhile (as I am wont to do) why this might be so. We're all aware that homosexuality is, thankfully, more or less fully accepted in today's society, or at least so my boyfriend tells me. But why is having been educated at the nation's finest school seen as needing to be hidden from general knowledge as if it were some deviantly-transmitted sexual disease?

New Labour has achieved much in its 11-year reign of terror, erm, I mean power. Some of it isn't wholly bad. Indeed, to be fair to the old buggers for a moment, the increase in acceptability of homosexuality and the equal rights now inherent to those of us who are very close to our mothers can partly be laid at the feet of His Tonyness et al. However, some things, perhaps even most things, that they have achieved have been less than good.

Perhaps that which I find the most frustrating is the dumbing-down in education. Endless tractor-production style figures of ever-increasing pass rates wholly betray the fact the majority of the well-educated population are more than aware that a lot of Britain's youth simply aren't terribly bright. The reasons for this are manifold, and there are enough words spread around t'interweb already without my feeble mind contributing more.

The point I wanted to note was that, more and more, I'm noticing that some people are finding the need to apologise for being intelligent and well-educated and even for being in possession of some erudite social skills. Also, other commentators have noticed a tendency for some people to be proud at being less than cerebrally efficient. Think carefully how many times you have heard someone say "oh, I've never been any good with numbers" or "my spelling's always been bad", followed immediately with an unembarrased giggle, as if to say, "isn't it funny how dumb I am?". Lawks.

The recent successes in CERN at the launch of the Large Hadron Collider have brought mathematics and physics back to the forefront of what be termed "cool" again, though I fear the effect will be but transitory. But things like that, and Concorde, and the jet engine, and the telephone, television, railways and other wonderful inventions didn't come from people who were proud to be numerically inefficient or embarrased to have worked hard and gained a good education.

So come along, those of you who went to Eton, Harrow and Westminster; graduates of Oxford and Cambridge unite; Doctors of Philosophy grab your bonnets and promise me one thing. You're all going to come out of your closet, look the country in the eye, and tell them that you're proud to be who you are, that you're pleased with what you have done, and that you look forward to what you're hoping you'll achieve.

Being a friend of Dorothy is acceptable now. It's time to fight for the friends of Minerva and Athena.

This is no ordinary supermarket offer

As a regular shopper at Sainsbury's (keeping the riff-raff out of Waitrose, as the late and indubitably great Alan Coren once said) I'm aware of their current offers to "feed a family for a fiver". Now, I'm a firm believer in good old-fashioned home cooking, so I'm no stranger to getting plenty of bite for my buck, or even prandial sustenance for my pound sterling.

I was intrigued to note however, passing an M&S Food store at a railway station in a terribly middle-class town in which I occasionally work, an offer proudly declaiming "a meal for two for a tenner". Cripes. How the other half live.

I presume that, for that price, your £10 doesn't just buy you any ordinary pre-packaged, ready-to-microwave, over-salted, Christ-how-lazy-are-you-that-you-can't-be-bothered-to-cook-properly-for-God's-sake food ...

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa

I am rather unnerved, slightly abashed, nervously shocked and grievously horrified, to say nothing about quite how smacked my gob is, to realise that, having founded this blog in all good faith at the beginning of the year, I have been rather more lax with its regular updating than Gordon Brown has been with all of our money. I should be ashamed for letting myself down so horrendously. I shall take my feeble body and clearly lazier-than-it-should-be mind off to the headmaster's study for a swish or two of the old cane. It's clear that I deserve it. Things such as this should not go unpunished.

Of course, the wholesale de-moralisation of society starts like this. It begins, innocently enough, with someone not filling in their diary as regularly as they should, goes through people putting their feet on seats on the train, playing their iPods too loudly, chewing noisily in public, and, before you know it, the yoofs are out there wearing ludicrously baggy sportswear, ridiculous hats and knifing innocent passers-by simply for "looking at me funny, like". It's a slippery slope, folks. Mark my words.

Anyway, that's all rather a long-winded way of saying that I'm going to be much more diligent in future about recording my thoughts, travails, moans, winges, delights and other detritus that this gin-soaked nous of mine occasionally dribbles forth when it is its whim.

So, until the next posting (which will, I hope, be sooner rather than later), as the Greeks say, αντίο.

What a load of Balls

Salute to you all. Once again, I have a quiet cup of tea over the morning Telegraph ruined by splurting out the aforementioned beverage at the sight of yet another piece of bilge penned by that most unscrupulous of Labour-types (my, and aren't there plenty to choose from?), Ed Balls. Well, good readers, you hold him down whilst I call for a nurse, because it is clear that this man needs professional help. His thoughts are rarely classifiable as wholly sane, but this last proclamation from Gordon McBroon's bosom buddy is wholly certifiable.

True to form, the Labour Government is committed to reform in areas by vast changes in the structure of the country, rather than correcting the inherent flaws that exist within the current structure. If something's going wrong, then "legislate" is the cry. More laws have been created since 1997 than you can shake several proverbial sticks at, but the difference to the country is small, apart from the increase in red-tape and difficulty that now now surrounds every decision in the allegedly free lives of Her Majesty's subjects.

Labour have failed the children of this country. This much is without doubt. I ranted only yesterday on the wholesale lie that is the 'graduate' culture now in the UK, and Brown-Balls (we need another name to make a tripartite soliciting partnership) are now out to create the same lie in secondary education.

It is too easy at first sight to agree with the notion that a longer time spent in education or training is a good thing. The truth is, if that education is (1) good quality, (2) good value and (3) ultimately serving a purpose, then yes, it is a good thing. If, however, the education is (1) so focused on short-term league tables, exam results and encouraging general muppetry through "deferred success", (2) indebting the students so that life post-university is poverty stricken with still no real increase in employability and (3) geared purely to help teachers earn more through teaching less to a lower standard, then it is not a good thing. Giving pupils two more years of a failing education system is hardly going to improve their or this country's future.

But wait, I hear you cry. The additional two years are not necessarily in school: they may also go into an apprenticeship or a job which offers at least one day per week in training. But why? What if they have the opportunity to go into work which doesn't offer training? What if they want to go into trades? What is wrong with someone of 16 simply working? For those who do leave school at 16 and head straight into the world of work, they are more likely to emerge five years later as a well trained, disciplined and employable member of society, due to experience, and are more likely to be able to afford to purchase their own home. Compare this to those who emerge from some of the country's second-rate universities with a pointless degree in media and beer-making studies with £15,000 in debt and no useful work experience to offer. As a past employer, I know who I would take on without a doubt.

I have no difficulty with lots of our young people heading to university to study extreme minority subjects. As a conservative, I'm happy for people to take their own decisions, but let them take them with all the facts. A degree is not a direct ticket into employment. It does not make you a perfect employee. And it costs a lot of money to (a) study, (b) pay tuition fees and (c) support yourself for three years without working. The truth is, if you want to work, you may be better heading out there straight from school.

So my final call is this: don't disrupt the lives of those who wish to study at school by making those whom the education system fails stay within the system. If a child has the drive to work at 16, then let them. In fact, to make a positive step forward in the education and life chances of our children, not only let them leave to work at 16, why not at 14? Apart from the highest within the highest professions, five or even seven years work experience will trump any three years at university.

Less, as is so often true, can be more.

Many a true word is spoken in jest

Greetings, and, as a one-time eminent Regius Professor of Etymology at Cambridge University may or may not have said, if you have been, I'm delighted to hear it.

I find it hard to believe that a week has passed without me stumbling across any aspect of the news, political or otherwise, that hasn't ired me enough to but a digital pen to digital paper. Remove yourself wholly from the thought that nothing has ired me: after all, I live in Her Britannic Majesty's Kingdom in 2008, and there is plenty that raises my blood pressure, but I've been busy and simply haven't had time to dust this blog down and commit any of my certainly committable thoughts to the interweb.

However, currently enjoying a cup of Earl Grey and very dunkable biscuit, I am listening to BBC Radio 4's repeat of 'Doonesburyland', a perfectly acceptable 30-minute documentary about the infamous cartoon strip of the same name which once-upon-a-time inhabited the filthy pages of that far from erstwhile publication, The Grauniad. It was not the general content of the programme which pricked up my ears, but a throw-away line referring to the people who were reading the cartoon in its early years,

"back when baby-boomers were still anti-establishment and hadn't grown fat and rich".

Oh, how true. How the poachers have turned gamekeepers under Bliar and McBroon's Britain. After all, there's nothing in this world so 'socialist' as a rich socialist, is there? How easy it is feel 'compassion' for the poor from your north- or west-London £500,000 town house and £70,000 of taxpayers' money falling into your bank account every year.

The past decade has increasingly created that which is becoming known as the IPOD Generation: Insecure, Pressured, Over-taxed and Debt-ridden. Encouraged by the government to go to university and indebt themselves for a degree which doesn't necessarily improve chances of employment (and nor should it: a degree has never been a career move: a degree should be studied to pursue an interest in a subject. If you want a career-led education, then go to college or an apprenticeship (another thing which New Labour has removed for a reason which no-one yet understands)), these people now emerge, post-degree, into a world with few graduate opportunities, discovering that the average wage outside of London and the public sector is substantially less than the £20k label bandied around (and in Yorkshire is less than £15k), with so much debt that they can't pay it off, and nor will they in any likelihood be able to buy a house for at least 15 years.

In the meantime, the baby-boom generation has sat and, whilst content to get fatter and fatter on the New-Labour milk fed to the middle classes, seeing £60k salaries topped-up by family tax credits, doing anything they can to keep hold of their new-found wealth. But that's not enough: why hold onto their money when they can rob the next generation too? We have seen an unprecedented shift over the past decade from houses as a social necessity to houses as an investment opportunity. Labour new that the old rental system was inefficient, but by opening it up with the new Landlord and Tenancy act as well as artificially underpricing inflation and keeping interest rates hugely below their natural level encouraged more of our fat middle-aged people to gorge themselves on the money supply. With housing inflation rising at more than 10%, why bother saving money for your pension when you can deny the next generation a house and provide for your own retirement through greed?

There are now in excess of 1.2 million buy-to-let properties in the UK. 1.2million homes that are now not available for purchase. I'm far from being a socialist, but housing is one area that could seriously change me. Can you imagine the effect on house prices if this huge swathe of housing was to come onto the market? Yes! It would fall, helping those who have no option to buy to buy, enabling people to stop renting and providing nothing for themselves but a pension for their forefathers. Surely the time has come for a heavy tax to be placed on second- and third-home owners, and indeed more, for those who 'invest' for a living.

Housing is a necessity, not an investment. For those of you with a portfolio of houses, I hope you're proud of the way you're screwing over the country for your own personal gain. Save money for your pension: don't live out your lengthy retirement waiting for me to pay your pension through my taxes because when everything was going good, you couldn't be bothered to save and provide for your own old age.

The only good that will come from all this is that the greedy middle-aged, middle-class fat cats will all die first. It's a shame that I may have to wait until I'm 60 for that to happen. Thirty years more renting: o joy!

The old days:

"back when baby-boomers were still anti-establishment and hadn't grown fat and rich."

And so the blogging starts ...

... at last. It's taken me several months from setting up this blog to get around to publishing anything on it, but it's a new year, and this must surely come above any other resolutions.

I can't promise daily posts, nor can I guarantee that I'll always be witty, erudite, topical and cutting, but I'll do my best. If nothing else, this blog will become a repository of my thoughts, random mumblings and other intellectual detritus that, from time to time, washes up on the shores of life.

To you all (if there are any of you), a happy, peaceful and prosperous 2008.

Salute.