A rare breed

The Peloponnesian Mountain Dog

Size: large. Bigger standing up on their hind legs. A skill they like to demonstrate whenever possible. Or whenever impossibly awkward to do so, and whenever totally impractical. Just whenever, really. Think best suit, shirt and tie, and muddy paws on the chest.

Natural habitat: in the way. Fridge, freezer, cupboard, whichever one you want to open, there he is, blocking the swing of the door. Finished? You’ll have to move him before closing it.

Character: friendly, good disposition. Good with dogs and people. Enjoys a stroke and a cuddle.

Likes: the smell of different foods, the smell much more so than the actual food. Opening doors, and drawers (yes, drawers) that he’s not supposed to. Popping upstairs for unspecified and mysterious reasons. Cricket, particularly Sussex and England, football, Arsenal, naturally, and rugby (Harlequins and England). Me (his favourite, of course), BLISS, K, MM, and DLL. White dog. The garden. The woods.

Dislikes: pesky foxes in his garden, sneaky uppy fly-out-of-nowhere pheasants, large bodies of water with waves in.

Coat: fur. Various colours of fur.

In a Jim Bowen moment…

…let’s have a look at what you could’ve won:

• 322 nurses, 272 teachers, 320 firemen, 269 paramedics, and (shockingly, there should be many more) just 152 MPs, and 6,079 of their duck houses;
• Electricity and gas: 7,042 households, water bills: 25,733 households;
• 44 libraries;
• 16,949,152 pints of milk;
• Flights to and from London, and a trip up and down the Shard for every Falkland Islander. Three times each.

Instead, we’re spunking £10m on a thoroughly undeserved state funeral.

Also, in arriving at the costs, they’ve not included the costs of the police, military and other personnel that “would be getting paid anyway”. I’m sure that will be welcome news for the football clubs that pay out, without any choice, for the for policing of their games.

The Reinhart Rogoff situation

A cornerstone of austerity policy, the Reinhart Rogoff study is arguably flawed (it excludes certain data) in any case, but, remarkably, it includes an Excel formula error. The error concerns an average for GPD growth that should be for all nations, but actually excludes Canada, Australia, Belgium, Austria, and Denmark.

Apparently it isn’t a fatal error, but I doubt that our economic masters will be rushing to openly admit basing policy on such flawed research, a typical example of the saying about politicians using statistics how drunks use lampposts: for support rather than illumination.