Number of rings ‘unsustainable’ claim Saturnian officials

It may not move as fast as light, but the effects of the recession certainly travel. Reports have reached News Hour that Saturn will be scaling back its rings in the coming months, as the pressures of maintaining their current number increase. Critics claim that this attitudes ‘reeks of short-termism’, pointing to long-term damage to the gas giant’s considerable tourism industry.

Tourists have expressed anger at the plans. Ryan Smith, of Lunar Base 1, exclaimed: ‘It’s crazy, I mean what do you go to Saturn for? The weather? It’s the rings, man, the rings. I’ve been going for years and now these mother****ers are going to wreck it for my kids? My three-year-old, he’s never gonna remember them how they were. It’s ******’ ****. Just really ****.’

Nearby Jupiter is also looking to scale back its moon-building programme, which has recently seen it edge past its gas giant competitor – with 63 to Saturn’s 61 – a move that has surprised many analysts, considering the income the planet receives from mining in the asteroid belt it shares rights to with Mars.

NEWS HOUR EXCLUSIVE: Shape of recession exclusively revealed

Top financial analysts have concurred on the shape of the recession, it emerged yesterday. The announcement was made at a joint press conference in London’s Canary Wharf, where a spokesman claimed the recession to be ‘shaped like a baby’, possibly ‘with an outstretched arm, holding an empty feeding bottle and demanding attention’. When reporters clamoured for more detail, the spokesman elaborated on the recession’s mood as ‘grumpy…having just been woken from a pleasing dream about rainbow coloured goats’.

Top city firms have reacted swiftly to the analysis, each putting forward their own plans to train the recession out of wallowing in its own filth. The shape of the recession is often critical to future-proofing financial dynasties – previous economic slumps have come in the shape of a bath, or the letter L. Such baby-shaped recessions typically last 18 months before significant mobility is achieved, but may require government support lasting more than two decades.

ELECTION 08: Gramm joins beetles, seeds, in denying orthodoxy

We are, we are told, in the midst of a ‘recession’. In the States, John McCain’s retooled campaign has come up with the canny idea of hammering home his economic credentials; as money hits people everyday, it is now an even bigger issue than the war. The sight of the government moving in to bail out struggling US mortgage giants must be even more alarming to Americans – whose popular mythology celebrates the successful salesman – than it was to Britons when Northern Rock was nationalised.

McCain’s campaign is not known for being on-message, and meandering chats on board the Straight Talk Express have favourably disposed many journalists toward the Republican hopeful. He recently made the Freudian slip of ‘exploiting’ rather than ‘exploring’ off-shore oil reserves, something that won’t endear him to Reagan Democrats. His current problem is Phil Gramm, the camp’s economic supremo; he was reported to claim that Americans are a ‘nation of whiners’ and that theirs is a ‘mental recession’ – not meaning that it was particularly bad, but that it was all in the minds of people ‘experiencing’ it. In some ways, he is right. Economics has at its roots a series of assumptions about human behaviour that unavoidably brands it as a social science, no matter how many graphs and equations you throw at it. Things are talked up and talked down. Markets have characters because they are swayed by herd instinct, and arrogance plays its part; of course some of it comes from the mind. But financial specialists being bailed out is news not to make light of, never mind the lack of two negative quarters‘ growth.

The real problem was that Gramm was perceived to have insulted the American people – not so, it was the leaders I meant, he said. No one minds if you complain about the person in charge, or the one whose asking something you don’t want to give – which is partly why Obama’s flip-flop on retrospective immunity for the phone companies in wiretapping operations caused such consternation.

The market, like life, is resilient (as are candidates, to a certain extent). Take the Capricorn beetle, thought to be extinct in the UK until it was discovered minding its own business on a pavement in Gloucestershire. Perhaps it was the first line of intergalactic reinforcements, sent from an alien world to learn what happened to all the beetle spies they deployed in the country years ago. Perhaps the beetle had only just landed when a human spotted it, picked it up and whisked it off to the Butterfly Farm in Statford-upon-Avon, where it will silently rage at children from behind its glass prison. Oh, the indignity. Either that, or it came to the country from the continent on some wooden pallets. Pick whichever explanation you prefer – but it doesn’t mean that, before someone saw it, the insect was not extinct in Britain.

Further insect amusement was recently provided by the Natural History Museum, whose experts failed to identify a bug on their grounds despite the institution holding 28 million other examples. The bug has been shipped off to Holland in an effort to determine its identity (perhaps it is a commando). The NHM has a history of unusual occurrences in the key of life: during World War II the museum was struck with incendiary bombs and the fire brigade, as they are wont to do, used lots of water to put the ensuing fire out. Among the drenched were the museum’s collection of aged seeds, some as old as 400 years. Remarkably, some of them began to germinate*. The green shoots of recovery, anyone?

*Nods to the Guardian science podcast for that gem.

The dreaded moral curtain: Jam tomorrow for mistresses?

Modern sensitivities being what they are to all points Muslim, it is remarkable that this headline has been allowed to persist. Perhaps it is part of January hysteria – all this talk of recession has unbalanced the people. On The Today Programme this morning, the phrase ‘jam tomorrow’ was used at least twice within half an hour, in connection with nuclear power and pay promises for protesting policemen. It’s a phrase most commonly associated with socialists ridiculing the promises of capitalists in lean times (it isthought to derive from Through The Looking Glass), so could this imply another leftist swing in the BBC editorial policy? Someone should investigate, as it seems the standards body is not doing its job. Or perhaps it is an optimistic phrase designed to lift the nation’s spirits in times of trouble. ‘There’ll be jam tomorrow Mrs Miggins, you mark my words. Everything’ll turn out rosy.’

In a rather more sinister twist, the BBC’s drama Mistresses has been corrupting the morals of the nation* by driving up membership of a ‘discreet encounters’ service which we will not name for fear of feeding its admirably opportunistic publicity machine.

*This may not be strictly true, but it was worth the stretch.

The terms of recession: turn that frown upside down

How many times do we have to say ‘recession’ for it to become real? Is it like Beetlejuice? Say his name three times and he appears, bringing destitution and negative equity into the world, forcing us all into rags. The media has been having an intensifying conversation with itself over whether or not it can get away with the ‘r’ word, settling for ‘recession fears’ or ‘fears of recession’ simply so this harbinger of doom can be included in a sentence. So, are we in one or not? It is probably beyond anyone to say. The standard definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative growth, but sometimes the indicators can be so complex to calculate that one can be in the depths of it for months without anyone really knowing. Here is a more thorough examination.

One wonders how much effect it has on world markets that yesterday was mathematically ‘the most depressing day of the year’, according to the Samaritans – Blue Monday, in traditional parlance. Considering that stocks and shares are traded so much on the basis of confidence, which people in a fug rather tend to lack, could this be partially responsible? The stocks began their fall in the Asian markets – Black Monday, in financial terms – do Asian news sources tell them similar things about the day’s high potential for cliffjumping?

Surprisingly, the top two cities to have googled for ‘depression’ are in Australia – Melbourne and Sydney. The term could be related to economics too, of course – but the search pattern closely follows that traced by ‘therapy’ so it seems unlikely – while the country most concerned with ‘recession’ is Singapore (also the home of the biggest fixation on ‘sub prime’, just after India). The number of searches for recession skyrocketed at the end of 2007, after a report from Morgan Stanley forecast an American downturn.

(On a different note, it may surprise some readers to learn that searches for Madeleine McCann’ are most popular in Ireland, then South Africa. Given the relentless flow of news without any facts – the latest of which was a sketch of the attacker that resembled a feral George Harrison – it is not the front page pull it once was. The London Evening Standard now steers clear of Maddie front page news (at least, no-news news) due to its damaging effect on sales.)

This January depression fever may also explain the hysterical tone of some of the news coverage. The Independent, which appears to have abandoned any pretence at appearing to be a serious newspaper, splashes with a huge graphic of falling stocks overlaid by ‘CRASH’. To the right is a picture of a man in Y-fronts, the attached text promising a ‘brief history of men’s underwear’ – it is hard to find a more bipolar front page.

Celebrities have their own way of coping with this difficult time of year. The man once known as Puff Daddy – then P. Diddy, then Diddy (still P. Diddy in the UK due to legal reasons) – will combat the trials of the new year with a whole new attitude, or certainly a new name.

“I have always evolved and taken a different name each time. Right now I want to be Sean John because that’s where I am right now.”

As this is two thirds what he was named at birth, does this mean that the Diddyman is at last comfortable with himself? Either that or he has evolved into a finely tailored jacket and slacks – ‘Sean John’ is the name of his sartorial brand (‘It’s not just a label…’ whispers the website – how very true). Still, perhaps the markets can learn from this one-man brand and rename themselves in line with their ‘evolution’. How about the Happy Smiley index of 100 leading shares? Or the Good Returns Guaranteed Industrial Average… it’ll be a whole new era.