Paul Myners

City Minister Paul Myners - apparently unbowed after the drubbing he got on Fred the Shred's pension arrangements - loves a colourful phrase. He enlivened a rather worthy post-Budget discussion with business leaders by re-cycling President Obama's call for "shovel-ready" projects. These are projects where permissions and approvals already in place mean that if money is secured jobs can be created immediately.

Myners was speaking a day after the Budget alongside diligent Financial Secretary Stephen Timms and Business Secretary Peter Mandelson - whose deliberative style makes every sentence sound as if it might be a major announcement. Businesses were perhaps surprisingly courteous in questioning, rather in the manner of those sitting at the bedside of the gravely ill.

Breakfast with an up and coming member of the Shadow Cabinet

Bright and engaging, but also very clear there will be no detailed roadmap on spending cuts before an election. They need to look at the books and then decide.

Is this wise?

Several of us listening thought the public really want to have a straightforward 'sock-it-to-'em' statement which gives at least an idea of what is necessary. We all know things are grim. Surely one reason why the Tory lead is soft (yes I know they're ahead by miles today, but it slips an awful lot too) is that they need to show the public they've got the guts for it. If they do, isn't it more likely that the public will have the guts to vote them in?

Spare a thought this week ...

... for the political correspondents reporting Darling's eagerly awaited Budget statement on Wednesday.

Ok I know journalists don't come high on people's sympathy lists but when I did this job I used to quake in my boots on Budget day. I think they get a bit more pre-briefing these days - in my time this would have been deemed totally unacceptable - but the fact remains you have only minutes to de-code some of the most complex financial material you have ever heard.

I used to run back and forth to the phone in a state of mild terror. Was that three or six noughts on the PSBR? What IS the PSBR? Etc. Budgets have become less important in recent years - we have pre-budget Statements now too and also a year-round policy of pre-briefing and leaking which takes the oomph out of 'em - but this year is a grand exception after a banking crisis and a recession.

Will Darling fight off the pressure to make eye-catching but essentially irrelevant pre-election gestures with the bad stuff hidden in the Treasury Red Book? Or is he going to rescue his reputation as a nice but essentially weak Chancellor run by his Prime Minister by finally telling us the truth about how tough things are and what needs to be done?

And while we're giving a bit of thought to the journalists trying to work it all out, spare one too for the Leader of the Opposition - the toughest job of his year is standing up to make a credible response while still computing what on earth it all means.

Be ready for Vince Cable later on. Every other party will try to pretend it ain't so, but what the Economic Guru thinks will be a highlight of the day.

G20 and a piano

OK, so what does a piano have to do with G20?

On the face of it, I admit not much. But let me explain. In common with millions of others I have been thinking about G20. I gave thanks last week I was no longer a political correspondent, tasked with making instant sense of it. I don’t know whether it will make any difference - I reckon the wisest comments were from those journalists who said that the small number of good things out there, those pregreen shoot green shoots we are hearing about, were already happening and nothing to do with G20. That chimes with the one thing I have learned about
politicians. They are rarely as powerful as we - and they - need to believe.

Anyway, this doesn’t explain the piano. It was just that as I was watching G20, my thoughts drifted from the behaviourally challenged Signor Berlusconi to something far more important – the rest of us, and what the relentless cycle of doom and gloom is doing to our psyche. Are we really changing as a result of recession?

Newspapers and magazines are awash with articles about consumer trends –"cocooning” (retreating to the cave for security) being a recurrent theme.

Apparently, we’re all going back to custard for comfort. Is that before or after we have logged onto those web dating sites which are apparently experiencing a big increase in demand because we would rather stumble through the bad times with a mate who can help share the bills?

Do I really believe all this? I reckon I am as good a source of data as anyone else, so I asked myself some tough questions. Was I different from last year? Eating a lot of puddings with custard? Spending time wrapped up in a duvet in my front room avoiding normal social contact? And I was just filing my report recording myself as satisfyingly robust with no obvious custard issues when it dawned on me I had bought a piano.

We’re not talking grand piano here, just traditional upright, but why did I become so fixated on replacing the wrecked Gors and Kallman I have had for years with a functioning, tuneful piano? It’s not as if there was any obvious trigger. Nor am I alone – I found that our from the delivery chaps. “Sales are up,” they said. It was all clear to me in a flash. This is about home and comfort.

I mean, after the kitchen table and your own bed, what greater symbol is there of
comfy old home than the piano in the corner and family sing songs?

Obviously if you play as badly as I do, the family sing song bit doesn’t happen very often. But that’s to miss the point. Just when I was thinking that all this trend stuff was a lot of nonsense dreamed up by the Brand Boys to shift longdeclining brands, it turns out I am actually part of a sub-trend myself. While I haven’t been out to buy any custard – yet – I find myself increasingly persuaded that it isn’t just the zeitgeist which is changing as a result of recession, but our deeper selves. I imagine this will indeed have all manner of implications not just for the amount we spend, but on what. Who is going to join Bird’s Eye twittering that the recession has been very good for them?