Sunday, May 16, 2010

Flushing the cache

Well, ha ha. But I do think we should note that David Cameron's appointment as Prime Minister was greeted by the markets with a dramatic spike in the price of gold, not usually seen as a vote of confidence. Here's the data, at Felix Salmon's; as he points out, trying to map events in consensus reality to market charts is a sucker's game (although I did once have to explain that the giant V-shaped downspike in MTN stock on the chart was the day when half the management team died in a plane crash).

In other post-election cleanup, YouGov did some polling about the public's preferences. The only group of people not to be consulted about the coalition - that's us! - broke 20% Tory, 33% Unholy Alliance, 39% Lib-Lab. Anthony Wells, like a good Tory, points out that this means 53% of the public wanted Tories in government, but doesn't mention that by the same token, 72% wanted Liberals in government. Ah, the times when we were the nation's least despised option. Also, how many people would have wanted a Labour minority government?

Hopi points out that the key lubricant in the coalition is money, and that both parties have agreed to give money to each other's pet clients. Interesting contributions in comments from Alan Beattie and Dan Paskins, babbling idiocy from others.

Computer Weekly is interesting on the future of the NPfIT debacle. Also here.

Healthcare volunteers in Kenya: it doesn't work. Turns out you need to "pay" people to "work" in "jobs" if you want to achieve anything lasting.

Whatever the coalition does, I've a feeling this story will determine how it ends up - on China's property bubble, banks, and the coming blowout of the government deficit as it inevitably bursts and lands on the government's books. As Doug "always up to no gooood" Henwooood would say, he believed in the collapse of capitalism until he realised the power of a good bailout. When the Chinese banks blow up and get bailed out, will American right-wing nuts blame that on black people?

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