Monday 5 October 2015

Themes for a Grey Monday Morning

Damp and grey in London here today, and the news is varied: sublime, ridiculous ... and probably quite significant.  In reverse order:

Ukraine

Did anyone notice a massive event on Friday?  Putin, Merkel and Hollande convened in Paris, complete with dragoons in shiny armour, to solve Ukraine ...  except that there was no communique afterwards - search the web as you will.  That, friends, is not a trivial matter.

We are left to speculate.  Did they make so much progress that they are minded to keep schtumm and keep at it?  Did Putin come in waving his Syrian-bombing willy in the expectation M + H would immediately remove sanctions?  Prior to the meeting, the WSJ quoted Merkel thus:  “We don’t associate the question of Syria with Minsk, these questions are not linked.”  She was obviously asked about it afterwards but the French press seem to think the issue was marginal at the meeting.  What about Ukraine then, eh?  Putin must be so hoping to have sanctions lifted.

Green Grauniad

Flushed with the success of its campaign for divestment of fossil fuel stocks, the Grauniad is launching Phase II of its mighty climate-change campaign!  Keeps them occupied, I suppose.  Come December, we shall all be occupied - perhaps physically - by climate protestors, with yet another Hollande vanity-extravaganza in Paris to come in Nov-Dec, of course.  And there really will be a communique after that one! - however empty and *disappointing* it may be (and it will).  Both Hollande and Obama want it to be their legacies, Heaven help us.  Must write about that soon.

Pesto to leave Beeb!

We all remember Pesto's dominance of the airwaves and BBC website back in '08-09, when the banking crisis was in full swing.  Then, somehow, everything started to go a bit flat, and it was unkindly rumoured his scoops had dried up because a Prominent Treasury Figure was no longer briefing him in real-time.   (Here at C@W we could calibrate this: in 2008, a link from the Pesto blog was worth a massive number of hits, even more than Guido or Worstall.   Couple of years later and the effect of a Pesto-link couldn't even be detected.)

Still: Peston on the ITV ... didn't work for Morecambe & Wise, did it?

ND
  

12 comments:

John miller said...

Yes, but Morecambe and Wise were comedians and Pesty is...

Oh, wait...

Suff said...

What's c@w's viewing figures? And how are they changing? Is there links between volume and events. Just curious

Nick Drew said...

Suff - yes, we (like Pesto, and Nick Robinson) max'd in 08-09, which is pretty much the apogee of blogging, either inde like us or corporate like Pesto. Could be a twitter effect

after we fell back post '09, we have been growing again steadily (outside summer breaks) with very clear peaks at each general election - we did esp. well in 2010 with (what we pride ourselves was) some decent coverage of the hung parliament / coalition negotiations

but still not back to 08-09 levels

bring on the next financial crisis !

Anonymous said...

How about something on Genius George. Geting the Local Authority pension funds to invest in major infrastructure projects.

Would you take financial advice from this guy? Talk about mis-selling on a unprecedented scale.

Nick Drew said...

thanks anon, good idea

Demetrius said...

Maybe it will work on ITV, Pesto is a better comedian than Morecambe & Wise. At least he can play the piano.

Raedwald said...

Pesto looks headed toward burnout to me .. wanting to be the Russell Brand of broadsheet TV is all a bit jejune and sixthformerish.

Dick the Prick said...

@Radders - isn't that Paul Mason?

CityUnslicker said...

The only decent broadcast political journalist is Andrew Neil, maybe Kay burley.

CityUnslicker said...

The only decent broadcast political journalist is Andrew Neil, maybe Kay burley.

Raedwald said...

DtP - him as well. Anyone who considers how his chest hair looks on camera is simply beyond the pale.

Jan said...

I like Pesto and I think he's going through a bit of a mid-life crisis rather than burn-out. He's a bit "Aspergers" but that's OK and better than bland.