Glen Oglaza writes…

“One thing puzzles me: The new Chinooks are due to come into service in 2012 and 2013 – but didn’t President Obama tell us only the other day that NATO will begin withdrawing from Afghanistan in 2011?”

If you haven’t got any gold, stock up on baked beans, because inflation is coming back.  Data released this morning from the Office for National Statistics showed inflation in the UK rose for the second month in succession to 1.9% in November, jumping from 1.5% in October. This rise in inflation is far stronger than consensus economists were expecting.  Guido will bet a large amount of money that the Governor of the Bank of England will have to write to Chancellor Osborne next year telling him why inflation is over-shooting target.

Not hard to figure out why when the government has printed the money to buy all the billions in government gilts offered this year. Take that in, the net effect of printing all that money via quantitative easing was to prop up the government’s debts.  Andrew Lilico at Policy Exchange is equally as pessimistic as Guido, he is predicting 2 quarters of anemic growth, followed by 2 quarters of contraction next year and double digit inflation to follow by early 2012 – a double dip. Double digit inflation and probably a recession in 2013 – stagflation.

Lilico calls the failure of Darling to use the PBR to tackle the deficit sooner rather than later a “nihilist fiscal policy”.  There has been some argument made by left-wingers that the ‘AAA’ rating is not really under threat and that it is just political scaremongering by George Osborne to claim otherwise.  The fact is that the markets have already removed the triple ‘A’ rating before the ratings agencies.  In terms of the interest rate paid and implied risk premium for UK debt, gilts trade like double ‘A’ countries – Japan, Portugal, Ireland – rather than triple ‘A’ countries like Germany.  As a result, the cost of servicing UK debt is already 20% higher* than it is for Germany despite £200 billion having been thrown at keeping short-term rates down, not surprising when the UK leads the G20 in having the highest inflation and worst indebtedness.

See also : Yo Dude, Where’s the Deflation?, Bank of England Pension Fund Surges Betting on Inflation, Double Digit Inflation is a Black Swan.

*Market rates today for UK 10 year gilts 3.90% against 3.24% for German 10 year bunds.

Beyond parody :

At least he is a Christian…

John Bercow said…

“I once gave some lingerie to my wife that she regarded as naff, but I won’t describe it further. And I have not repeated the exercise.”

About now Tory-leaning bloggers will be enjoying lunch courtesy of CCHQ.  They will be chatting with the tweeting Tory head of press and enjoying a drink with Andy Coulson.

Iain Dale, the doyen of Tory bloggers, will not be in attendance, but ConservativeHome’s Jonathan Isaby will be leading the pack of online party supporters gathered in the parliamentary dining room.

Guido’s working theory is that the next election won’t be decisively effected by blogs, though Draper’s dictum that during the campaign the news agenda and party narratives will be derailed by blogs, is probably true.  It might be an embarrassing tweet, it might be a blogger uncovering something.  The mainstream media gets pretty feral during a general election so it will be hard to grab media mind-share. 

Guido will be betting on video being the break-out communication channel – even outside the heat of a campaign individual Guy News videos have reached half-million viewers …

UPDATE : Coulson was a no show.  It was braised boar (on the menu, not a reflection on Henry Macrory).

The Xmas Paintball Match united the politicians from Labour and the Tories against the anti-politicians from the Taxpayers’ Alliance, Big Brother Watch and Guy News on the other side.  Guido is happy to report that the politicians took an awful beating, 4 -1 was the thrashing.  The games were characterised by blatant cheating and vicousness, particularly from the women.  Sam Coates (that is his back pictured in the middle) fought valiantly for the politicians but he was no match for Emily Nomates.  The aggressive attacking from Mark Wallace of the Taxpayers’ Alliance and Alex Deane from Big Brother Watch meant that the politicians were repeatedly overwhelmed.   Personal thanks to Jessica Asato from Progress for firing vertically downwards onto Guido’s head and Brittany Greer for war crimes.  Alex Smith made it particularly easy for our team to find him by wearing a white LabourList t-shirt for the first half of the night.  Guido can confirm that Alex and MessageSpace’s Jag Singh squeal like babies when pain is inflicted on them…

Thanks to MessageSpace for sponsoring the night/beer and Domino’s for the pizza.  It is two for one on Tuesdays…