This, by Charles Spencer in the latest Spectator, made me smile:
“This is a time for making the most of small mercies. One of the greatest of these, as the financial system collapses around us, is the splendid joke that is Robert Peston of the BBC. His extraordinarily camp, over-emphatic delivery would be perfect for reporting glitzy Broadway first nights but seems hilariously at odds with worldwide economic catastrophe. Peston has all the glee of the callow cub reporter rejoicing in the size of his scoop while lacking the imagination to understand the anxiety his excitable tales of doom-and-gloom might be causing others.”
I admire the scoop-getting skills of Mr Peston, if not always his analytical skills. Anyway, as Mr Spencer continues:
“Like poor Mr and Mrs Spencer of Claygate, Surrey, for instance, who somehow managed to commit themselves to £40,000 worth of home improvements (double glazing and a new kitchen) just before the current crisis went big time. As I do my lengths at the swimming pool, I sometimes experience a knot of fear forming in my guts. Mercifully, thinking of Peston, an egregious character both Jane Austen and P.G. Wodehouse would have been proud to have invented, makes me laugh and my panic disperses.”
On a nicer note to Robert Peston, however, he has put economics at the top of the BBC news agenda in a way that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. Part of this is down to simple events, but part of it is due to Peston’s skills in ferreting out the news, not to mention his status as a friendly journalist to NuLab. Whether this continues if the current bunch get kicked out of Westminster is a moot point.
Hmm?? The FSA has spent a lot of time hassling banks and others to set up procedures to prevent “leaks” of confidential, price-sensitive information and threatening all manner of terrible things if firms were found to be the source of such leaks. And yet we have seen over the last few weeks text book examples of of market manipulation, leaks of highly price sensitive information, failure to follow the rules on the release of such information etc.,. One rule for firms; one for everyone (government, regulators, journalists, especially when they’re all best mates) else, it seems. Will the FSA investigate this properly? Are they capable of doing so? Get the pigs primed for take-off…..
Well apart from seeming to have a very good coke connection, it is his propensity to smile,
Neigh, laugh, while giving us the bad news,
that I find disconcerting.
RAB: Yes, I have often used a similar theory to explain otherwise inexplicable things. My theory #1, which is mine, is:
Other people have access to better drugs than we do.
I have found this to have almost unbounded explanatory power.
It is somewhat concerning that you feel you have to write “if the current bunch get kicked out ” (emphasis mine)…
But then I suppose the other lot would not be discernibly better, and most of the real power is in Brussels now, not Westminster, so maybe it doesn’t matter.