I watch the news with some disbelief. Posh gits come on prating about the deficit and their plans to cut it. Cut public services, mainly by cutting employees. There is no private sector to hire these people - especially older ones. Thus unemployment spirals. With unemployment, we enter an extended much deeper recession than we've had for the past couple of years.  Everyone must suffer, they tell us. No alternative. (Actually, there is. Raise taxes.) At this point, it's beyond political partisanship - if I'm right and they're wrong, we're all screwed. I try telling myself that Osborne may be both ignorant and a fool but Vince Cable isn't.

Vince Cable is becoming one of those saplings growing 20 feet below the cliff top, about a mile above the bottom of the canyon, with the heroine desperately hanging on while one little root after the other is pulled out of the soil pocket. I'm trying to believe that Vince Cable is not the little sapling but the rope thrown from above... it's getting harder.

So at this point I sincerely hope I can write next year about what a foolish, ignorant person I was and glory in our new prosperity.

Currently, the masses are distracted by pomp and games. In particular, the World Cup. We really are distracted. Last night, I was in the kitchen finishing cooking. I heard a huge cheer go up through the open back door. I went upstairs and checked: yup, England had scored a goal. Husband, brother in law, brother-in-law's friend were watching (half heartedly) the Big Game: England v US.

I want an African country to win. It would make the whole continent happy. It would increase the world wide happiness quotient considerably more than a win by anyone else. if Spain, the bookies' choice, wins, the Spanish (and maybe the Portuguese) would be happy. The rest would be miserable. Same with most European winners, with the exception of Germany. If they win, the English will be distinctly more unhappy than if anyone else holds up the big cup.

My sister, her husband and a friend are visiting for entirely too short a time. They were on a cruise that docked in Dover yesterday and are leaving Thursday. After hearing about their cruise, my husband said, "We ought to take a cruise."

"What do you do on a cruise?" I asked.

"Eat."

Well, eating, like the World Cup win, is a short term happy maker. There's some long term implications I'd prefer to ignore, but, like Keynes said, in the long term we're dead.

Keynes may not be much good in obesity control, but I do wish the Great and Good currently planning our economy would take a look at him again.