Housepricecrash.co.uk

It's a funny website. As far as I can see almost to a man they believe:

a) house prices are going to crash in nominal terms (much more than they have so far, as big as that is)
b) that inflation is massively (and perhaps deliberately) understated by the government

So in effect they must believe house prices have crashed in real terms already. And all of their valuation charts are wrong. For example once (not on that site I think) I read that Labour have underestimated inflation by 5% year for the last eight years. That's about 50%, so this chart really should show the line dropping to about the bottom of the 1990s crash.

Possibly the most heart-breaking story I have ever read

How the dream of running an olive oil farm in Italy fell sour. Even though people could 'adopt-an-olive-tree'. I wonder why more Italian smallscale farmers don't get the chance to say how difficult their jobs are in the Guardian?

Ted Kennedy dies

I was sat at my desk in Kensal Rise, checking the news on BBC online, about 7:25am.

How clever am I?

For disclaimers and history see here or here or here.

The interesting thing here is the rate of grade inflation/pupil improvement. This was 1.2% last year (the red line), the same pace as the previous year. Only in 2002 was it considerably higher, at a huge 8%, when a new system of exams came into force (which showed in 2003 in previous years' versions of this - maybe I was missing the 2002 data?) At the time substantially fewer children sat them (with more taking AS levels) which could explain an increase in average pupil performance. Indeed the blue line, whcih is simply the increase in the number of A-level points received by the country as a whole, showed little increase that year. However next year numbers shot back up and yet the grades stayed higher. Pupil numbers are increasing again who take A-levels, and so all country grade inflation/point improvement is running at a higher rate.

David Cameron

On his time at Eton, he said: 'When I was 14, 15, 16, I was doing things that teenagers do ... drinking too much, being caught having the odd fag, things like that.

This can't be right. Fagging was abolished at Eton in July 1980, when Cameron would have been only 13. Shades of Wor Jackie.

Enfant terrible bingo

Martin Amis is 60, the Guardian's homepage says. My first reaction was 'they're going to say enfant terrible'. Even I however wasn't expecting it to be said in both headlines of their first two articles here.

And the Independent.

The Guardian gets in on the act

Next they'll be showing a table of how to adjust your grades for grade inflation!

[thanks CB]

England win the Ashes

England have won the Ashes back. In 2004 we had the same hopes only to see them dashed, but maybe after this victory middle class people in the South of England will now start to watch cricket.

UPDATE: Now it's ended the recession!

A-level results

We're only getting the first results in, but as John B notes in the comments below, it seems the Telegraph is still flying the glag for blonde girls leading the way with multiple As. However they don't appear to be jumping in the air, another sign perhaps of couch-potato Britain. The Guardian meanwhile has some hirsute boys. Nothing from the Times or Mail as yet. But it general it looks as if the trend away from blonde girls being best at A-levels is still in place.

Update: They're getting into their stride now. The Mail article even has the lot, including jumping in the air, although I think they might be being ironic.

Spurs are top of the league!

As if it was a bit peeved by the attention other sports have been getting (the Ashes is still on, no?) the Premiership has already seen two games for many teams. AND SPURS ARE TOP!*.

Being generally pessimistic I prefer to see it as meaning they are 6/40th of their way to avoiding relegation, but there you go.

And Burnley beat Manchester United! If we don't get a post on MTMG about that, I'll eat this blog.

*London clubs in general are doing very well, with 3 of the top 4, 4 of the top 6, and 5 of the top 8 places in the country.

My 3rd post on athletics

A few years back I looked at the evolution of the world 100m. The news that Usain Bolt has beaten his previous 9.69s with a 9.58s demands a 3rd post.

As far as I can see this is the best improvement (0.11s) in a 100m record in the era of electronic timing (and maybe some time before), beating the 0.05s improvement of Maurice Greene in 1999 (also, obviously, that is true in % terms). It also is getting quite close to the 'natural limit' argued for here. I wonder how wind-assisted it was?

End of free internet news

I've changed my mind entirely on whether charging for content on the internet will work, and now in fact I think moves by theTimes to start charging will be a success and everyone will follow. It always seemed a weird business model to give away everything for free - I must spend nearly £200/year less on newspapers than I did.

I wonder however what will happen to columnists? Most of them seem to want to republish their columns on their own websites (this is how I've always read John Kay and Martin Wolf from the FT) and I suppose this will be allowed to continue, as (I think it was Felix Salmon who pointed this out) many types of columnist really need to be read as widely as possible for the concept to work

Anyway from Monday this 'blog will be charging £10 a week.

What's he done now?

Bill Clinton lands in North Korea for surprise talks

...girl's parents said to be concerned but confident he will do the 'right thing'.