Is your deodorant up to scratch?

+In London last week and yes: Phew! What a scorcher! The atmospheric temperature got up to 34 degrees C, somewhat tamed by a light breeze. People seemed to be adjusting to it. The buses were another story. Metal and glass boxes trundling around at London’s usual slow pace, these instruments of torture must have registered temperatures in the mid forties. I didn’t actually see anybody faint, maybe I was thinking of my own consciousness too much. All the buses were bad, but the ‘Boris’ buses as ever were worse. Somebody seems to think that in a moving object air conditioning works better than simple ventilation. None of this I imagine matters much to the occupants of the fleets of black limos snaking around the congested streets, whose chauffeurs keep engines running whilst waiting for their masters and mistresses. I think they—the indulged passengers—might want to check that the overheating outside their cooled incubators might not lead to some infernal reckoning by the not-so-lucky. Only saying.
 
+On much the same theme the weekly Evening Standard looked at the city’s cultural scene and had a piece on private members’ clubs. Apparently there could be a glut of them developing. One new club opening soon will be the Leconfield ‘an exclusive business networking club planned for a former MI5 building founded by property tycoon Robert Tchenguiz and backed by former prime minister Liz Truss. Founding life memberships cost an extraordinary £500,000’ (Evening Standard July 9th) This I imagine will be the only club in town where a former PM will be serving behind bars. Yes, I’m jealous. I should have pursued membership of the Garrick when I had the chance. I would have voted to allow female membership. But not maybe for Liz Truss. But Truss’s club could be useful, as an ex-MI5 building it may still be fitted with lots of working listening devices, and if the club attracts lots of overseas (i.e. Chinese) business people, we could garner lots of commercially sensitive information. I expect this is why Liz is involved.
 
+At least with the heatwave happening in London, the rest of the nation got to hear about it.
 
+The Telegraph is telling us that if Our Andy appoints Red Ed (Miliband) as chancellor the wealthy are going to put their skates on and leave the UK. It doesn’t say whether that’s for good, or for the good. These threats, first circulated in the 1920s never materialise. More’s the pity. If Ed is selected as Chancellor we’ll see a lot more of this barely concealed right-wing anti-Semitism emerge. I only hope that the new managers of the economy have the good sense to look at alternative models of economic management, perhaps even considering such approaches as Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). Perhaps more on that in a later blog.