In line with the BBCs new policy for all the editors and correspondents who blog, Idle Scrawl is coming to an end in its current form. In future you will be able to find all of my writing here.
So IMF boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn has resigned, meanwhile ECB boss Jean Claude Trichet has merely walked out of a meeting with the man who runs the Euro group (says the FT). Trichet and his fellow E...
The IMF exists to do, above all else, two things: raise money from governments and lend it to other governments while extracting structural reforms in return. Ten years ago the Fund stood accused of ...
I am about to migrate the blog yet again to a new platform; having started out as a side-of-desk operation on Typepad (see here) the BBC then set up a blogging platform on Moveable Type that went thr...
Whats changed over the weekend, in the light of the Lib-Dems drubbing, is not the Coalitions willingness to re-look at the NHS reforms; its the scale of the re-appraisal. Having tried to do several t...
Ive just flown in from Egypt to be confronted by a media awash with the early results of the UK local, Welsh, Scottish and AV polls. Its a big switch from the slums of Cairo to the psephological nice...
By the time I woke up the global rolling news was in full mental jacket. There was not much actual material, only the mobile phone footage of the site of Bin Ladens death. I spent the day on the stre...
Ive been in and around Tahrir Sq for most of the day - Egypts first May Day for decades to be held in relatively free conditions. In the taxi there was the official trade union conference blaring fr...
Mayday in Tahrir Square In white letters, across a wall next to Tahrir, is grafitti which says: "Enjoy the Revolution". In English. At midnight local time, on the eve of 1 May, a lot of peopl...
Tahrir Square has become a mini speakers corner, with knots of people constantly forming; sometimes impromptu demonstrations. I met a woman whose son has been snatched by the police; a man who believ...
In the last chapter of Kafkas Amerika, there is a scene where Karl, the hero, gets lured into watching, then joining, a grand enterprise called the Grand Nature Theatre of Oklahoma. As he arrives at ...
Emails from the Greek finance ministry always drop with a title that says "?????????" since the BBCs email system cannot cope with the Cyrillic alphabet. However todays missive from the Greek...
Sometimes one graph says it all. Heres one that says quite a lot. In the graph above the little blue crosses indicate the price of wheat in certain countries that have experienced social unrest this ...
"Pina is trying to say the most simple things," says Wim Wenders, his voice close to a whisper: "Pina invented an art that is so obvious its unbelievable that nobody came up with it. Pina...
INT. DAYTIME: High above the capital city of a major country two credit rating executives, their sleeves rolled up, their Blackberries switched to silent, stare at each other over a desk: "Hey bo...
Newsnight has learned that the King of Swaziland, Mswati III, is planning to visit London for the Royal Wedding, bringing an entourage of "around fifty" according to sources inside Swaziland....
The unions have been struggling for weeks to work out what to do following the demo on 26 March. Todays RCN no-confidence vote is one response. I understand an informal alliance of public sector unio...
The Independent Commission on Banking report, out today, says the retail arms of banks must be protected against risks taken by their investment arms. But it stops short of recommending forced separa...
What was the problem the Independent Commission on Banking was trying to solve? Once you had defined the question you had already defined the scope of the anwers. So heres the key paragraph of the re...
As I prepare for the Vickers Commissions report into the future of UK banking I am swotting up on "Regulation W". This is a rule in the USA that prevents US banks from doing a substantial amo...
. Its Vorsprung Durch Technik versus "manyana", cold efficiency versus laid-back Mediterranean sloth, its the Europe of no motorcyle helmets versus the Europe of precise train timetables. It ...
Portugal managed to borrow E1bn, short term, at interest rates so prohibitive that the finance minister has now announced they will seek a bailout. The prime minister is about to go on TV and admit d...
On the windswept celtic edge of Britain there is a small GP practice that I know well. I bump into the guys when Im on holiday, often in the pub, or on the beach. We talk about rugby, they pass judge...
This graph shows what it costs the Portugese government to borrow money over 10 years: 8.6%. Ive just checked with my own bank and theyre offering me 9.9% unsecured over 10 years so my "spread...
Getting myself longlisted yet again for the Orwell Prize (and good luck to all the real bloggers who dont have a mainstream media pension, salary and self-censorship training to fall back on)... made...
A short summary of the Euro snafu thats about to happen: 1) Tomorrow Ireland publishes the results of bank stress tests. It has to find - or the EU has to find - another E18-25bn to shore up its fail...
1815: Ive just left Trafalgar Square, where about 200 people are holding an impromptu rave, with a minuscule number of police present to notice the thick waft of sensimilia. At Fortnum and Mason the ...
Something Mats Persson, of the think tank OpenEurope, said to me yesterday has stuck in my mind: the EU leaders have come to identify the stability and survival of the EU with the Eurozone. Likewise ...
Portugals PM resigned last night because his ruling Socialist Party failed to get through parliament an austerity package they had just agreed with the EU. There will now be an election, but in the m...
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