As regular readers will know, I spend quite a lot of time in the States (what you might not know is that I have a bit of a thing for the pretzel dogs available in food courts over there; but I digress). One of the great things about visiting the States is the exchange rate (nothing like buying a laptop and paying half the price you would in the UK!). 

But oh how the mighty have fallen. 

The last time I was over the exchange rate was 1.79 (which I considered to be awful given the rates I was getting earlier in the year), but when I checked the current exchange rate for a friend I almost fell off my seat: it’s fallen to 1.43! 

Hopefully by the time I’m next over things will have changed, but given Brown’s handling of things I think it’s best not to bank on it. 

No really.  I mean we’re a bit short at the moment, so why not just turn the printing presses up a few notches and make more money?  Believe it or not, this is precisely the policy being advocated by Gavyn Davies over at Comment is Free:

"This is where governments might need to be even more unorthodox. The tax cuts do not have to be financed by selling bonds. They can be financed by asking the Bank of England to offer an overdraft to the government, which is a polite way of saying by printing money. If you think about this as a process in which the central bank prints bank notes (essentially at zero cost) and gives them to the government to hand out in tax reductions, you would not be wrong in any meaningful way. This is a crazy and dangerous procedure when inflation is threatened - but it is the most powerful way of fighting deflation that economists have invented. Perhaps it will become necessary."

Wow.  Just, wow. 

Poor Lembit (you know, the guy who got hammered in the LibDem presidential election; receiving only 22% of the vote), he just couldn’t seem to motivate LibDem voters to the same degree he motivates celebrity gossip magazines. 

I just received an email from a LibDem friend (who voted for Ross Scott) to let me know that he might have given Lembit’s candidacy a little more thought had his now famous ‘Home Truths’ email arrived before the election… rather than four days after! 

Makes sense I guess. 

I logged into my Amazon account earlier to add a new book to my saved basket (which I really must go to the checkout with at some point).  Upon logging in though I was greeted with the following message:

You can’t argue with that! 

Mark Hanson has a great post over at the Total Politics Party Lines blog drawing attention to some of the key aspects of Obama’s campaign.  Well worth a read. 

The other day I posted about Jacqui Smith’s astonishing claim that people have been coming up to her to say they can’t wait to get their hands on ID cards.  The Daily Mash have their own take on the absurdity:

"MOST British people are looking forward to having a policeman stand on their windpipe, the home secretary said yesterday.

She said: "People have been coming up to me in the street and demanding I set about them with a baseball bat.
"One man even handed me a bamboo cane before getting down on his hands and knees and suggesting I start with his buttocks.""

Makes the point rather well, don’t you think. 

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep,
though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

…at least go for something vaguely believable.  ID cards are due to be available from 2012, but apparently people can’t wait to get their hands on them.  Jacqui Smith is beating people back with a stick:

"I regularly have people coming up to me and saying they don’t want to wait that long."

I think not…

Things don’t look good for Labour in Glenrothes, but even if they do pull it off doesn’t it say something quite interesting that an extremely narrow victory over the SNP would be taken as a sign that Brown is performing well as the party’s leader (not least given the fact the current Labour majority is 10,664)?

Success, a very relative concept.