A London Moment.

We were at an excellent concert last night at the Barbican featuring the Kings of Convenience. 'Brilliant show. At one point band member Erlend Øye stated that he used to live in this town - meaning London. Obliviously thrown by the lack of the kind of enthusiastic reaction you might expect from other cities he then asked where we all were from then? Queue a myriad of cosmopolitan responses covering much of the UK,Europe and even Mexico.

That's London, about as far from parochial as you could possibly get. I think that's one of the reasons I love it!

Nobel Peace Prize

It appears Barack Obama has received the Nobel Prize for the achievement of not being George Bush.

‘Good thing too I believe. He may not have done much in his time in office but just his presence on the world stage signifies the lifting of a dark cloud.

Essentially this prize is recognition for the American people showing the good sense to elect Obama, an event that still heartens me and many others around the world.

Still, I expect the moronic, Fox News viewing American right will probably twist this into a negative. For them any approval from abroad is to be regarded with suspicion. These cranks can’t even accept that Obama is an American for goodness sake.

House Price Madness

Reports this week say the housing market is now back to peak 2008 levels. Of course it isn't really back to that level in real terms as the £ has taken one hell of a hit. The whole economy has effectively been run for the benefit of those homeowners/banks who over extended during the boom and the weak £ - driven down by low interest rates and quantitative easing - has been left to carry the burden.

Of course, outside of hols on the Costa', the poor saps who live in the UK don't see this. With the house price boom being the bubble literally to big to let burst what are the lessons we all have learnt? Pretty much all the wrong ones I'm afraid! We seem to be going back to our destructive debt addled ways, only this time even more recklessly with the false security that the government won't let it all go tits-up.

The economy is effectively held hostage by the an insane housing market and the resulting policy of ongoing low interest rates is the very prescription that to a large degree created the environment for the recent crash in the first place. Next time the bubble looks like bursting the government will be impotent to act - they've shot their bolt and not only not fixed the fault in the system but adopted an economic course that can only lead to a bigger financial meltdown in the future.

We really are screwed!