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Listed below are comments made by Diversities between Tuesday, 3rd November 2009 and Tuesday, 1st December 2009.

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Lessons from 1974 12:13pm on 01 Dec 2009 Pinstriped gents? I think the BBC is trying to steal an adantage over the other media through gentle mis-direction.

However, strolling round the lake in St. James Park should ensure that any coalition takes ecological policy seriuosly.
The Wright stuff? 4:01pm on 25 Nov 2009 It has been clear for a long time that the backbenchers only have a hope of reclaiming power from the Labour and Conservative front benches if they use salami tactics. These proposals are intelligent salami tactics. The remarkable thing is that they are to be debated under a Government so jealous of any and all attempts to restrict or contain it's powers.

I am compiling a little list of MPs standing for re-election despite dubious conduct in their expenses claims; in the hope of seeing them all defeated, just as we threw out all the 'sleaze' MPs in 1997. I am tempted to compile another list of MPs voting against this needed but minimal reform; in the hope of seeing a good proportion of them also benefiting from the resettlement allowance for defeated MPs.
A healthy squeeze? 6:51pm on 24 Nov 2009 This is an excellent time to be talking a good fiscal squeeze , but a very poor time to be executing one. There are five reasons:

1. Demand in our economy is weak, and demand overseas is not yet strong enough for us to substitute much overseas demand for a shortfall in the UK. So we still need fiscal and monetary stimulus in the UK.
2. There is a clear prospect that the markets will get worried about the volume of Government borrowing if there is no credible scenario pointing to control and reduction of that borrowing. So we need to put that scenario in place.
3.Expenditure cuts work much better if there is time to plan their implementation; they are more effective and they cause less unintended damage to programmes.
4. Tax increases also work better if planned and announced in advance.
5. In addition, the prospect of higher expenditure tax shifts some expenditure forward into the time when we need additional domestic demand; and so reduces the need for fiscal stimulus.
New name for a new economy? 4:06pm on 13 Nov 2009 'Managed capitalism'?

That puts the blame for the successive messes where I (a former governemnt economist) think it belongs; with those failing to manage the system prudently and properly.

Successive governemnts in many countries have been consciously trying to manage capitalism ever since 1945. Nowadays, North Korea and Cuba are about the only exceptions. The new dimension in this crisis is that we have finally admitted that the task, like dealing with the ozone layer or global warming, needs governments to co-operate.
On the nod? 6:12pm on 12 Nov 2009 Of course the Commons should debate the expenses proposals. We voters need the debate so we can clearly identify the most unrepentant scavengers of the old system so that we can be sure of voting them out.
A return to reason? 6:31pm on 11 Nov 2009 So it was a pretty rough meeting. This translates as:

"The ACMD mebers told Johnson that if he did anything like the way he sacked Nutt again, he could expect to be without advisors; and if they did not get his promise to behave in writing, it would be 'Goodbye' immediately. Next, he must sign up to whatever guidelines Beddington and Rees come up with. Further, they would not accept a new Chairman unless they sat in on the selection.

The Home Secretary agreed."
Cautious good cheer 6:01pm on 11 Nov 2009 Two pieces of good news. Wages and hours are taking more of the strain of falling output; and the Bank of England is showing a realistically wide range of possible future paths of GDP. The second will help firms and consumers to build the appropriate degree of uncertainty into their planning, and so aid healthy recovery. What I doubt is the likelihood of the Bank's least unlikley GDP path being realised.

QE seems to have postponed the realisation of substantial losses in the housing and stock markets. I wonder how much of them are still to come, however carefully the bank and Treasury tread in draining off QE?
Global temperatures - and the future 12:56pm on 10 Nov 2009 Sorry, Paul. This posting does not wash.

The underlying worrying phenomenon is that the proportion of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere has risen, is rising and shows no sign of ceasing to rise. Our basic understanding is that an increased proportion of greenhouse gases raises the everage temperature of the atmosphere at which a planet achieves equilibrium between inward and outward radiation. No one has questioned that fundamental point. Unless it is wrong, we must act on the assumption that the planet is on a warming trend. In which years or decades we actually observe the warming that appears inevitable is a question of detail.

Any and all sources of natural climate fluctuation have to be seen as operating as fluctuations around the upward temperature trend produced by the accumulation of greenhouse gases; unless and until that observed accumulation (and/or its link to the temperature of the atmosphere) is demonstrated to be a mistake.

This is an unpleasnt conclusion. but it is unsafe and bad science to duck it.
Is Britain growing yet? 4:56pm on 04 Nov 2009 I remember - I was a government economist then - reckonong that the first estimates of GDP in early 1980 would be revised upwards. It was no surprise; we were used to one of the most difficult things about economic forecasting being the estimate of the values the forecast should start from.

The truth still is that in no economy are the first GDP estimates good enough to give you more than a rough sighting shot at GDP levels. And more often than not, the trend between the two most recent quarters is influenced by the revisions to last quarter's estimates. Policy just has to be made against a background of that degree of uncertainty; and policy is likely to be less mistaken if it faces that uncertainty.

So is the UK economy growing? Well, it is clearly moving towards renewed growth.
The economist's new clothes 11:51am on 03 Nov 2009 @Behaviouraleconomist2009

Yeah, I have read a good deal of that, and still agree with the bookies. Positive versus negative presentations is another issue; one that has long been familiar from survey and focus group reserch for advertisers.

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