Originally published @ 8:46 pm, Fri 11th Jun 2010
The concert for the World Cup last night was good and the opening ceremony was enjoyable too. One part featured the continents being created out "tiles" of decorative sheets, and then footprints from Africa being added to show that we all came from Africa originally. So unlike England's messages of 1996 - "Football's coming home", it seems the message is "Footballers are going home".
Despite the enthusiasm, added to by a huge 40 foot wide banner across Nottingham's Council House today, my prediction is still for England qualifying through tense and nervy group games before going out in the knock-out section after a sending off triggered by provocation unspotted by the referee.
Meanwhile, the Con-Dems are continuing to repeat their message of "forward to progressive austerity" and cuts to public services. (Or am I listening to just too many maiden speeches on BBC Parliament?)
On the BBC's Daily Politics, Michael Portillo was taking some pleasure at how he thought this campaign was going and how it was becoming accepted as a new consensus in the country. Wiser heads such as Tony Robinson and Caroline Flint pointed out this was way too early to form such a conclusion.
The Con-Dems have asserted that things are worse than Labour said. Alistair Darling has pointed out "It is simply not true that there is any new information that wasn't publically available at the time I did the budget. Only two things have changed: one, our economy is growing slightly faster than the last figures that were published, at 0.3%, but it's still modest. The other is that borrowing turned out to be about £10bn less than I forecast."
The overall priority should be to secure the economic recovery. Britain could continue to borrow at the levels Labour planned at this stage and the way out of recession and debt is growth, and keeping people in work, paying in, much better than throwing people out of work so that after redundancy payments, they're only taking out.
But it's possible the world leadership for keeping countries together for reflation to tackle recession may have waned and the mentality of the nineteen-thirties may be taking a hold.
Infuriating still, is the loss of focus on efficiencies which was the Cameron promise.
Closer to home, I was sorry to hear that my barber was violently attacked on Wednesday at the close of the working day. http://www.thisisnottingham.co.uk/crime/Hairdresser-stabbed-times-robbery/article-2295865-detail/article.html
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