Saving Gordon

Not that anyone in their right mind would want to do anything so foolish, but Sky's resident psephologist reckons that economic recovery is Gordon Brown's only hope of saving his political skin.

From what we know of the prime minister, of course, he will do anything - literally anything - in order to do that.

So if economic recovery is what is required, economic recovery is what will be delivered. So long as growth is positive in a year's time, GB will be content. To that end, expect still more quantitative easing and crazily low interest rates, all designed to engineer a boom in time for the next election.

Oh, wait a minute...

The Bank of England has kept interest rates on hold at 0.5% and announced that it will inject an extra £50bn into the UK economy.

It won't be enough to save him, of course, but he will try and try and try, and if we are all to be taken down with him in the bust that follows the boom, that is not something that Gordon is going to concern himself with.

Left-wing journalism

Tony Curzon Price has written a piece on a proposed new tax:

Taxes are basically a good thing when you put a cost on something that needs some degree of discouragement. This is why a carbon tax would be good. Left-wing journalism falls into that category. Every time a left wing journalist misrepresents the facts, it should be counted as a pure social cost. Moreover, in a world of multiple news sources, I do not believe that someone who is actively searching for the truth actually needs left wing journalism.  Google does a perfectly acceptable job if you're looking for the truth.  And if you end up believing something that isn't true, I think that the likelihood of a mis-sell - of having swallowed a pack of fibs - is very high.

That suggests that left-wing journalism, which has a high private pay-off to the writer, also has a high externality, or social cost.

So, go ahead and tax left wing journalism.

(I've changed it a bit)