The cost of Iraq
The death toll among US forces in Iraq has now reached 530. That is just ten times the 53 fatal casualties suffered by British troops. But as the Americans have had about 15 times as many soldiers on the ground as the average British force of some 9,000, the British casualty rate is 6 per 1,000 - half as high again as the American. This is a mystery, particularly as British deaths from "friendly fire" account for only a small part of the difference.
Gold Handicap
There is now an extraordinary pattern of interest rates in the world's main economies if one looks at the real rate - after adjusting for inflation.
US -0.8 per cent
Japan -0.1 per cent
Eurozone +0.1 per cent
UK +2.7 per cent
It looks as if interest rates are becoming more of an incantation than a flexible tool of monetary policy. The latest hike in Britain of a quarter of 1 per cent is intended to signal to consumers that they should rein in their spending while leaving trade and industry with a minimal rise in costs. Edward Heath once said that reliance on interest rates was like trying to play golf with one club. Now the golfer finds himself with a left-handed club, in a bunker and fading light, and not even sure which green he should be aiming at.
Up the poll
The latest wheeze to increase the abysmal level of turnout in British elections is to give the vote to 16 and 17 year olds. Leave aside the fact that those most likely to vote at present are the elderly: if everybody between 16 and 18 had cast a vote in the 2001 general election, the turnout would have gone up from 59.4 per cent to just 60.5 per cent.
