I feel most unsettled today; I have the sense we could be on the edge of something truly momentous. A bit like those moments when you feel you're close to understanding a truth and seeing a change in your thinking - and yet the understanding and change is somehow still eluding you. Maybe that's just me.
Another amazing week with more accepted wisdom turned on its head. Firstly, Gordon Brown. Floundering leader a month ago, the new Churchill today. Yes, that was the comparison I heard on Radio 4 yesterday. Quite how this compares with thousands being killed I am not so sure but that's by the by.
Unprecedented government intervention and cross country cooperation on interest rates - and yet the panic didn't stop, although I'm sure it will pass in time. Just where did we find £400 billion pounds to unblock lending between the banks? That's an incredible sum of money.
And then, on a much smaller scale, Iceland and the impact their fate could have on the Scottish independence movement. As
Brian Taylor says, Holyrood politicians may
"have to slap themselves to stop muttering "Iceland" every time the First Minister mentions small nation independent status in future." A month or two ago, independence was most definitely in the air, it was coming through the back door. As I said last week, the argument for it now seems risible.
What will it all really mean? Will it blow over in a few years of pain and we'll go back to the way we've always been? Or will we change?
I like
Paul Mason's Newsnight post, and this comment:
The successful outcome to the next policy response will be a prolonged recession and a heavily socialized banking system. The unsuccessful outcome could be a depression. Either way take a long look at the high-debt economy...as I write students are arriving in London to run up an average £30k of debt that will hang around them for a decade, people are paying for drinks on credit cards. Taxi drivers are passing in cabs effectively the property of the Icelandic government. So look around, as Auden might have put it:
"As the clever hopes expire, Of a low dishonest decade"
And finally.... to lighten the mood,
this post Tamsin has alerted me to, which has to be the funniest thing I have read in a very long time. I love this idea of Robert Peston transformed into a ball of energy and blue light, the essence of pure news. Absolutely inspired. God, we are clever bastards in this country, aren't we? Although, clearly not, in so many ways.
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