Creative Accounting #412

Ben Affleck (in Hollywoodland) = Robert Smith - lipstick

Saturday's Happiness Experiment entry

The heat of the sunshine on landing in Naples

An incredible momentary sunset

Seeing an infinity pool at close quarters

Positano - yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Jason's story, told at the kitchen table after supper, about his nightmare holiday with the boys in Spain, including the Mini heater burning his face

Bean soup on the beachfront at Positano

Playing table tennis with N, Finn and Jason

Wild life

Jake: Can you take out the splinter with the weasals?

Noah: I've got a horn in my foot!

Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Listening to Jason Reitman talking about his film-making after screening of In the Air - George Clooney's old school star quality

Making a peanutbutter sarnie for Honeyman to beef him up for his rugby match against Fortismere this evening - FCHS won

Approaching home

Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Reading Lynne Barber's An Education by Lac Leman at sundown

Getting back to 93.0

Roesti and egg

Waumth - Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Approaching the end of Waugh's Men at Arms (with the prospect of picking up Officers. & Gentlemen from Black Gull on the weekend)

A hot bath

A sunny interlude in the Embankment gardens with laptop and ed spec

Telly - yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Chairing RTS session on multiplatform TV with Dr Dawn and the Embarrassing Bodies team on 14th floor of LWT

Coining the concept of Quotables

Taking Orla to Channel 4

My concerns about the Tories

Ex-Bank aide attacks ‘bizarre’ Tory plan

This is the most wildly dangerous thing I have seen in 100 years of economic policy in Britain

Joe Murphy, Political Editor - London Evening Standard
09.10.09

David Cameron's economic plans have been branded “wildly dangerous” by a former senior Bank of England official.

Economist David Blanchflower, former member of the Bank's monetary policy committee, said the Tories would risk plunging Britain into a deeper recession by turning off the Government's measures to stimulate recovery.

In his conference speech at Manchester, Mr Cameron said quantitative easing should end “soon”. Mr Blanchflower called the stance “bizarre” and told the Daily Mail that calling off stimulus too early would snuff out recovery. “This is the most wildly dangerous thing I have seen in 100 years of economic policy in Britain” he added. He said the Tories showed “no understanding of economics”: “It could drive the economy into depression.”

The Bank has held interest rates at their 0.5 per cent record low. So far it has created £146 billion of fresh cash, buying up debt in the form of government and corporate bonds. Mr Cameron said: “If we spend more than we earn, we have to get the money from somewhere. Right now, the Government is simply printing it. Sometime soon that will have to stop, because printing money leads to inflation.”

Chancellor Alistair Darling said: “If we stop supporting the economy now it would crash.”

On Pantheism

That which is impenetrable to us really exists. Behind the secrets of nature remains something subtle, intangible, and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion.

Einstein

on Doing the Right Thing

Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society's punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.

Martin Luther King

on Christianity

Ah! what a divine religion might be found out if charity were really made the principle of it instead of faith.

Shelley

Plenty of kind, decent, caring people have no religious beliefs, and they act out of the goodness of their hearts. Conversely, plenty of people who profess to be religious, even those who worship regularly, show no particular interest in the world beyond themselves.

John Danforth - priest, ambassador, senator (b. 1936)

Quotation - Simple Pleasures & the Present

One should count each day a separate life.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca, philosopher (3 BC - 65 AD)

Quotation - Simple Pleasures

Let your capital be simplicity and contentment.

Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)

Word of the Day

callipygian = having well-shaped buttocks

From Greek calli (beautiful) + pyge (buttocks)

Creative Accounting #602

Bat for Lashes = Kate Bush + Bjork + Josie Lawrence

Visitor from the old country - today's Happiness Experiment entry

Seeing Cecelia again and a big hug outside Tate Britain

Chicken soup in the Wolseley with Ce and U

Reading Waugh's Men at Arms

Prick Up - Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Sorting out bookshelves - to make space for N

Seeing Prick Up Your Ears at the Comedy with Roddy - including Matt Lucas & Chris New getting the giggles

Watching the clouds floating in front of the full moon