Junk Press Releases - and What GDP Is and Isn't

There's a thing called churnalism, and even a website that lets you see if a story is just churned, that consists of re-cyclying press releases and passing the result off as news. Almost everything you read about The Bank is churnalism - and what we the staff get to read is even less informative than the press releases. I don't know who does The Bank's PR, but she could get a job with Max Clifford keeping stuff hidden anytime. Anyway, on the Saturday after the Royal Wedding, the final straw just landed on my back.

The story was in the Daily Mail (it was on the table where I had breakfast) and was from an alleged professional services firm called RSM Tenon, to the effect that the two long weekends in April will cost the UK economy up to £6bn in GDP and up to £30bn in "lost productivity" - whatever that is (and it's a number so large it can only be related to turnover, not value-added or profits).

Which just proves that Messers Tenon and the others have no idea what GDP is. It's measured in two ways: expenditure and revenue. The two should balance - though not in a given period - and systematic differences are often taken as a measure of the size of the black economy if revenue is less than expenditure (and presumably cash flight if expenditure is less than revenue plus change in savings). The three components of revenue GDP are wages and salaries, corporate profits and a small fiddle-factor, excuse me, adjustment for notional incomes. When there's a public holiday, all full-time workers get paid anyway. Temps don't, but a lot of them are doing jobs that need doing on public holidays and carry on, so it's only those who are doing jobs that can be suspended for a day that miss a day's billing. But that money goes into the company's profits, so it has a net effect of zero. As for corporate profits, way more businesses are open for trading than you might imagine: what closes are their head and back offices, and that makes no difference to anything. The production is mostly offshored to places where the workers don't get days off for Royal Weddings, so that doesn't stop. As for the effect on sales, well, if you need to replace your washing machine (this is not autobiographical) you need to replace it and all that happens is that you order it on Tuesday 3rd May instead of Friday 29th April. It's deferred, not abandoned. This doesn't even effect GDP figures for the quarter, because both days are in the quarter. It all nets out at about zero.

This is basic first-year undergraduate economics (or if it isn't, it should be). A Business Editor should know it, just as they should know that any "story" about the "costs / benefits to industry" from the CBI or the NIESR is utter propaganda. (People don't get happier when they start earning more than the median salary (NIESR), and low-wage immigrants have contributed 0.5% of GDP over about four years (NIESR)? Well. Gee, who would have guessed the employer's tame "economists" would put out stories like that?) Twaddle like that should not be published. I am not going to speculate on the motives of an editor who puts trash like that on their pages.

That's it, I think. No more British newspapers. No more Today programme. As for the rest of the BBC - no. I'm not sure what I will use or read, but I will be giving it some thought.

The Original Muscle Car - Ford Mustang 289

I was visiting the lads under the bridge in Richmond one Wednesday evening recently (that's code for the Richmond Men's Meeting) and so had to play the game of Find-The-Last-Parking-Space-By-The-River. I found one, and I found this just across the road from where I parked.

I think it's the first model, and the badge said it was a 289, which translates to a hefty 4.7 litres. No more need be said.

Pembroke Power Station - A Memory of Summer

Back in 19... never you mind, I spent six weeks on the construction site of Pembroke Power Station in Welsh Wales. It was on the south bank of the river River Cleddau, not far outside the town of Pembroke. It was a 2000MW oil-fired unit, with 4x500MW steam turbines, and a separate 40MW (I think) gas turnbine - aka jet engine! - unit to handle peak demand. When I was there, the first turbine was almost commissioned, while the fourth was still being constructed, so every stage of the installation and construction process was visible. I was a summer employee (no "internships" then - I was actually paid: £15 a week plus board, I believe) with the Southern Project Group (SPG), which was part of the then CEGB responsible for building power stations and the like. It was all good relevant stuff for a teenage boy doing an OND in Engineering.

During the day I would climb and crawl over open-grid flooring, accompanying one of the SPG engineers as they tested the installation of various bits of kit, armed with a device called a Megger that tested for electrical continuity and I suspect insulation leaks as well. The details are fuzzy now. Each level was referred to by its height about sea level. The highest was something like the 143 - and when you looked through the open-grid flooring, it was a long way down to the concrete floor.

I stayed in the Labour Camp, as it was known, with the luxury of my own room with sink, when the personnel officer moved me to what amounted to the officer's quarters. In the evenings I would go for walks round the country lanes, just to tire myself out, and on Saturdays I went into Tenby, more than once walking all the way. It's about two hours or so, but through some very pleasant countryside, and more than once someone would stop and give me a lift. Those were different times. I'm not sure I walked back though - I think I took a bus to Pembroke. One afternoon, an engineer decided we should walk up the chimney - there was a circular ladder running inside the four chimney pipes inside the concrete shell. It took us about an hour or so - it was eight hundred feet - and the view from the top was utterly spectacular. It felt like you could see over the horizon.

For no reason, I looked it up recently. A new one is being built on the same site. The old one was taken out of service in 1997. I have lived through the life of a power station.

Maria Pages Dunas

Where else would you see sand drawings following each other with astonishing fluency, a couple struggling to make contact through thin drapery, a woman with the most beautiful arms (yes, really) in the world clacking castanets with astonishing virtuosity and dancing to music ranging from european jazz / new age piano to straight flamenco guitar and Arab percussion and singing that went from flamenco to pure arabian.

The arms give it away. It has to be Maria Pages. I caught Dunas at Sadlers' Wells on Friday, and was entranced, amazed and reminded that Ms Pages is one of the sexiest women alive. Oh and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui can dance a fight between two of his shadows.  Luke Jennings' review in the Guardian is a neat description. He's missing the point when he says that Ms Pages doesn't seem to change her style to match the settings and work of Sidi Cherkaoui: she doesn't need to. Some artists don't, not many, but she is one of them. Miles didn't change much in his playing against the changing music his sidemen made either. I can tell you, the audience I saw it with were entranced.



I'm off to see the Dutch National Ballet next Friday. I'm sure they will be wonderful, but they won't be magic and they won't weave everything Pages and Cherkaoui did so seamlessly and entrancingly.

Holiday In The Algarve (5): Trains at the Praia de Barril

Portugal isn't really very wide. About two and a half hours flat out on the N125 and A22 from the west coast to the Spanish border. I took the scenic route through endless acres of orange, lemon and olive trees from Silves across to the N270 to Tavira, where I joined the N125 and turned left to the praia de Barril. The beach is across the marshlands on an island: you can walk across or you can take the train.

You have to walk across this pontoon-supported bridge to get from the mainland (you're looking at the mainland) to the train station...

Once there you can either walk or wait for the train - take the train. And click on the photograph to get the exquisite detail of those rails...

The locomotive is a little diesel dressed up to look cute...

But there's two of them, and the line has a passing loop  (which makes it an official Proper Railway)...

 ... those points don't have any levers, you just drive your train at 'em and bump 'm over to where they need to be. This trip does not happen at high speed.

 Once at the other end, everyone jumps off pretty quick and return passengers board.

While the surfer-shop guys unload the freight. You don't want to know how little strapping they used to hold those surfboards.

It's a neat little bit of entertainment for €5 the round trip, and that walk will feel way more than a kilometre when you do it under the hot midday sun.

When visiting the praia de Barril, eat first. The restaurants are ghastly. By British standards they're ghastly. I have no idea who designed the shops on the beach, but they weren't Portuguese.

Holiday In The Algarve (4): The Perfect Saturday Afternoon Beach

So after the praia de Barril, I went down the coast to Fuzeta, on the basis of Just Because. And a good thing too, because there I came across Perfect Beach Type 2. It's small...

 It's located in a small town that still has its own life...

...in this case, fishing.

 It has a couple of huts serving beer or coffee...

And on Saturday afternoon it has the chirrupy sound of people enjoying themselves.

These guys playing bowls...

 or these guys shooting the breeze about whatever it was. Local politics or business, maybe.

I'm guessing that most of those people knew each other by sight, a whole bunch had been to school together, and maybe any one of them knew the names or identities of at least another ten. It was like everybody knew everybody else knew how to behave and what they'd be doing, so no-one was surprised or upset. There's an age-related cycle of activities: in your early teens you jump off the wall into the river; later on you sit around looking cool and pretty, spinning out a Coke or an orange juice for two hours; then you hang out at one of the bars, being edgy and serious, before calming down, moving to another bar, and talking about football. Finally, you play boules or talking town politics.

Holiday In The Algarve (3): The Wild and Secluded Beach

This is a beach on the Atlantic coast of the Algarve. That's all I'm going to tell you about it. It's mine, mine, I tell you. It's my secret, my precious beach, yes, my precioussssss...

Okay. I'm calming down now. What makes a perfect beach? I discovered there are two types of perfect beach. This is type one: wild and secluded. Serious waves, pristine sand, a couple of pieces of driftwood, rocks to create sculptural interest...

a good cafe / restaurant, a long walk with the waves occasionally splashing up my legs, not many people, and did I mention clear blue skies, the silvery light on the water....

About a third of the beaches on the Atlantic coast can only be reached by dirt path through coastland like this...

Those beaches are for hard-code surfers and privacy-seekers. Plus they don't have restaurants or cafes. Never mind having one as good as this...

Don't let the appearences fool you. The Sunday I was there, they had a party of ten middle-class bikers for lunch at 2:00 pm. When I popped back for afternoon cafe com leche and cake, the bikers were suiting up to go. This is the octopus salad I had...

and I ate it looking out at seas like this...

(I've loaded the full-size file - it's worth clicking on the link and taking a look at the big picture.)