Well it seems that as the world leaders meet at the G20 summit this week, (it’s called a “summit” as they always have summit’ to talk about), the main thing they’re deciding on is the best way to fix the economy in a unified fashion. Having Brazil do this and Canada do that just isn’t working, so it seems, so all the leaders along with their treasury brain-boxes have got together to thrash out a solution.

Gordon Brown himself is in a very peculiar position. Behind in the polls but constantly gaining against the Torries the worse his economy gets. What kind of incentive is that? If this keeps up he should just devalue the pound to it’s lowest level since 1946 and call a snap election in the same week, bingo!

No, what Mr Brown is going to do is to actually buck this trend. He wants the economy to do really well and hope that, by the time he calls the next election, we’ll all reward him for making us better off.

Before the current economic crisis the best way in recent times to make the economy better off was the simple idea of job creation. If the government creates a job not only does the employee not claim benefits but they actually start paying you tax – it’s like a ‘6-point game’ in football. Labour was good at this and they did create a huge number of jobs around Britain. I myself benefitted from the New Deal packages, which now seem so outlandish as they were created using money from a £5bn windfall tax on private companies. A windfall tax, surely not? Isn’t that a bit, you know, Marxist.

We can’t create jobs now though apparently as companies around Britain are shedding them due to some kind of recession. During a recession most of these companies still make huge profits but not enough to make the shareholders happy. That’s when we get the news that “BigCorp has made 5,000 employees redundant”, or that the “RBHBHS Bank has shed 25% of their workforce”. So nice to see that many of the workers at these companies are making the biggest sacrifice of all as they go out their way to increase shareholder value. Unfortunately they wont be having a quartly appraisal now in which to bring this up.

So Brown must go back to the drawing board and think again. And it seems that what he’s going to do is create what’s know as a ’stimulus package’. God, that sounds pretty macho, doesn’t it? I can see Brown putting on a Barry White LP while he tells us that he’s about to make us relax, put a smile on our faces and save the country’s economy with his huge stimulus package, “now lie back and think of England”.

But the truth is that this stimulus package aims at putting a whole bunch of money in our pockets in a multitude of various ways. This is meant to kick-start the economy; save jobs; solve the current retail crisis; reduce inflation; and make us happy Labour voters. The government doesn’t quite have this money so we’ll all have to pay it back in one form or another in higher taxes in the future. This mechanism is also known as ‘Tax and Spend’.

Now I get to the main point I wanted to address. Who is Brown going to give this money to? And how will he do it?

An obvious way would be a straight income tax cut. Brown has already done this, with mixed results (the 10p tax debacle), so he may leave well alone. Also it’s hardly going to send you rushing to the shops when you realise you’re getting, say, £10 extra in your pocket every month.

He could try George Bush’s method of giving around £400 of tax refunds to every tax paying American. This could work and it’s the one I’d benefit from most. It might just take a bit of time to work through though.

He could decide to give it to families earning under a certain amount by utilising the Family Tax Credit system. This also would take time to work and has the huge problem in not giving ME any money and alienating all those single people out there, many who are potential Labour voters.

One brave option would be to temporarily cut VAT from 17.5% to around 10%. It’s bold but consumers would feel the effects straight away. That is if the retailers actually reduce their prices by this amount instead of just pocketing the difference themselves.

No, I think he should give every man or woman over 16, in work or not, who earns less than £40,000 per year a nice cheque for £250. In time for Christmas. This would reach the recently unemployed too, unlike the tax rebate measures. After spending all our tax money bailing the banks out surely he could throw some our way. And we’d pump it straight back into the economy, not into offshore accounts.

Rough calculations show this as costing around £10 Billion – a snip. To pay for this we could just do another windfall tax on the utility and oil companies. They’ve put their utility prices up by so much in the last three years and have seen their own profits shoot up at the same time. The main UK energy providers made profits of over £3 billion currently, an increase of 538%, and the oil company Shell alone made nearly £8 billion in the first six months (read this Unite article about Energy company winners). I’d like to see people argue against that. Well, apart from oil men of course. I’m sure they’ve just been saving up for this eventuality anyway.

So there you go Mr Brown, my sticky plaster for the current recession. And just think, it’ll pay for nearly half of the HD TV I’ve been looking at buying for the last month. And as I stare at you in High Definition over the next year I’ll probably be thinking to myself, I might vote labour this year. Everyone’s a winner!

Here’s a few things I’ve been looking at during our dreary summer.

20 Abandoned Cities and Towns at Web Urbanist.

Minimal Techno actually invented in late 60’s shock! Hear the lost tapes of Delia Derbyshire the BBC electric music pioneer.

The timeline of internet memes. From this chart I think I was first getting into the internet in 1998.

Superb interview podcast with Charles Webster. Some great songs there along with a discussion about his new compilation CD on NRK Records.

Bit of a news round-up today. Here are some of the stories I’ve bookmarked recently:

This article about North Korea is maybe slightly biased? It’s opener of, “In a cold sweat, I was led away by the jackbooted and armed North Korean border guards to a bleak side room” is a fair indication of how the rest of the article goes. Fair and balanced news reporting from The Sun as usual.

For some reason I like this story about a Hypnotist Thief from the BBC.

The Pen Spinning Tournament in Japan. Check out the videos by clicking on the pictures.

Big Business and the NHS from The Guardian. “No minister can now discuss the NHS without mentioning “new providers” or “alternative providers”, which is their code for private companies, or “choice” and “reform”, which means privatisation.”

Also at The Guardian (yes, I do read other papers) is a look on why people hate Heather Mills. I’m a fan of hers which makes me quite unpopular as to most people she’s on par with Myra Hindley.

I have some bad news for any of you who went to Margate on their holidays as a child. The Scenic Railway in Dreamland, Margate, has been burned down. The site lost it’s Big Wheel many years ago and has slowly been stripped back so that almost just the Scenic Railway rollercoater was left. I still think was the scariest rollercoaster in Britain, mainly due to the fact is was all pretty much wooden and saw it’s fair share of fatalities over the years. It was Grade II listed and it was only a matter of time before somebody put a match to it. The property there will be worthy a few quid now, probably. Best keep an eye on who profits out of this.

Live Web Cam of the peregrine falcons at the top of Sussex Heights.

And finally a video. I’m not very good with heights and this walk along an abandonded ridge way defies belief.

Drivers always seem to make my life as hair-raising as possible as I cycle round our Cities’ streets. Luckily we have some good cycle lanes in Brighton, but here’s a sit that focuses on the very strange ones: www.weirdcyclelanes.co.uk.

I’ve noticed the start of the proposed Seafront-to-Downs has been created with cycle paths going up two blocks up The Drive. If anyone knows where they’re going next please let me know.

News:

A 2,000-year-old mechanical computer salvaged from a Roman shipwreck has astounded scientists who have finally unravelled the secrets of how the sophisticated device works.

New generation anti-depressants have little clinical benefit for most patients, research suggests.

1 In Every 99 Americans Now Behind Bars. While one in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 34 is behind bars, for black males in that age group the figure is one in nine. Land of the free?

The World’s largest digging machine. Weighing in at a portly 45,500 tons.

The Wire’s War on the Drug War. Ed Burns, Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, Richard Price and David Simon the creators of HBO’s The Wire have their say on the drug war.

And finally:

I’ve never bought much lingerie but this site my change my mind. The interactive knicker picker. But for some reason I can see Men using this site a little more than women.

Today’s game is Dice Wars. It’s like a mini version of Risk where you have to roll higher than the territory you’re attacking. Good quick fun!

Today’s ‘everybody is stupid’ moment goes to the news that Camelot are withdrawing a scratch card game as it’s too confusing. Yes, it uses minus numbers to show cold temperatures and working out if you were colder or hotter proved a bit too much for some people.

Today’s bet was another of my crazy longshots. It’s a bet that Croatia don’t qualify from Euro 2008. They are currently top of the table with only two games to play but if Russia win both of their matches, Croatia lose against Macedonia and England beat Croatia next Wednesday then they don’t go through to the finals. It’s a long shot and it wasn’t even available at the normal betting sites. Therefore I took my first shot at using BetFair which is a totally different kind of betting site, called a betting exchange. Here you can place bets ‘against’ results as well and you can choose your odds from a selection. It’s not as complicated as it sounds. For a £25 stake (which was free with the offer I had) I stand to win over £600. Fingers crossed!

Today’s annoyance is Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, insisting that the War On Iraq has not increased the threat of terrorism. I feel so confident which such free thinkers in charge of the country.

Today’s mix tape comes from DJ Rocha with his Made Inn Radio Show mp3 mix – sorry about the RapidShare link. It’s a light deep tech-house mix with nothing too underground or experimental.

Today’s ha! comes from John Scalzi who reports back from the new Creation Museum somewhere in the US. “Every single thing on display in the Creation Museum is either caused by or a consequence of exactly three things: 1. The six-day creation; 2. Adam eating from the tree of life; 3. Noah’s flood.”

Been a real busy month at King Mansions with some great web projects coming out the door this week.

Here are a few of the things I have been reading and looking at during the month of August.

Easy to follow recipe for Bhindi Gosht. Great Pakistani Okra & Lamb Curry from scratch. You can get half of those ingredients in a packet of Karahi Gosht Masala spice blend available from your local world food outlet.

Short Movie (10 mins) called Flesh which juxtaposes a vision of a pornographic American society with the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks. This is NSFW.

“Over the past several months The Nation has interviewed fifty combat veterans of the Iraq War from around the United States in an effort to investigate the effects of the four-year-old occupation on average Iraqi civilians. These combat veterans, some of whom bear deep emotional and physical scars, and many of whom have come to oppose the occupation, gave vivid, on-the-record accounts. They described a brutal side of the war rarely seen on television screens or chronicled in newspaper accounts.” Superb article in The Nation.

Motorcycle News magazine need to check which ads go with which stories, as can be seen here.

How many times can Superman give his secret identity away without anybody remembering? Lots.

Ooh! Another new episode of Tribe tonight. Read interviews with the presenter Bruce Parry and some of his crew.

Here’s all the online crap I’ve found interesting in July:

The Story of My Sands – A look at the codewords used over tannoy systems. I well remember a Mr Sands on Brighton Pier and Somerfield.

Heavens Above. Calculates where satellites and the ISS will appear in the sky. Apparently you can see Iridium Flares in daylight too if you know exactly where to look.

What The World Eats. Time Magazine photo study of the food consumed by different cultures around the world.

Charlotte Gainsbourg – The Songs That We sing – (listen by choosing ‘5:55 The Album’)

The 12 Master Formats of Advertism. Nice video explaining the 12 main advertising tropes.

Mike Read is backing Boris Johnson. Not the dead cockney one but the dire radio DJ. Not only is his article pure reactionist gold but the comments are hilarious too. I say Mike Read for Mayor!

Trailer for a crazy South Korean movie about dragons with rocket launchers, called D-War.

The iPhone v the Nokia E70. An interesting article (contains comedy and swearing).