I should have added to my “Butter and Butter” item below a word about spending. My support for a plan to keep tax cuts conditional on continuing surpluses after two years obviously includes spending restraints. Well, not ‘obviously,’ or else I wouldn’t be writing this item. Any proposal lacking such restraints would simply encourage politicians to spend the surpluses away before tax-payers got a look in. Something along the lines of the spending caps initiated in the mid-1990s would work. Or at least a commitment to keep government spending increases no greater than the rate of consumer price inflation. Put all that together and you have a centrist program that cuts taxes immediately, restrains spending, and reassures voters that further tax cuts won’t be damaging to national solvency. A political winner, I think. Thanks to all of you who had a cow about this omission. You’re right, of course.
SCOOP REVISITED: My first ever editor in journalism was a wonderful man, William Deedes, then editor of the Daily Telegraph, where I was recruited the day I left college as a summer intern. Deedes – then in his 70s, and now 87 – was the model for William Boot, the hero of Evelyn Waugh’s classic spoof of journalism, “Scoop.” Deedes is a legend over here – and rightly so. Funny, decent, tireless, he still routinely refers to male colleagues as “old cock” and female acquaintances as “darling.” Amazingly, he’s still at it. His latest assignment was covering the earthquake in Gujarat, where, after a few exhausting days in the cholera-ridden horror, he came down with a mild stroke. He’s recovering now in a Kent hospital. But the funniest tidbit of his recent travel is the expense report. Some things never change, it seems. In “Scoop,” young Boot went to Abyssinia, and took with him a collapsible canoe, an astrolabe, a humidor, a jointed flagstaff and Union Jack, 12 cleft sticks, and a Christmas hamper with a Santa Claus outfit. All expensed, of course. In Gujarat, Deedes took a flying tour of the disaster area in a helicopter. The Times reports today that his editors had assumed that he had caught a ride from a U.N. chopper or shared a pool reporter helicopter to make his rounds. Nope. Deedes rented a helicopter himself, and just submitted an expense sheet – from his hospital bed – with a $7000 bill for a short ride. Some things simply don’t change. I hope Bill gets better soon. At 88, he has a long career still ahead of him. And his proprietor, Conrad Black, will just have to deal with it.
The Dish 