Dogs are animals of integrity. We have much to learn from them.
Year: 2009
The Commerce Department has revised downward its estimate of the U.S. growth rate from the third quarter of 2009, see this report.
Citing weaker consumer spending than originally estimated (discussed in an earlier post here) the annualized growth rate is now 2.8%, down from 3.5%, far too weak to make any progress on the employment front.
An example of how we really do own our lives.
We were invited to our friend’s 25th Wedding Anniversary on Saturday, 21st November.
It was in a local pub and they had invited many friends, some of whom we had not seen for many years.
One friend had started his own architect business, built it up over the last 10 years and, although he had lost a large amount of work because of the recession, things seemed to be picking up.
I mentioned that my work had dropped off dramatically since the summer. He said:
Well, Jon. You can make your own mind up what you do. You can either decide you’re going to go bankrupt or you can decide that you’re going to succeed – in spite of everything.
For some reason, that short conversation had a huge impact on me and I realised that it really is mind over matter and once we make our mind up about something, good or bad, it tends to happen.
By Jon Lavin
Whether you live in the UK or not is an issue, because it might well affect somewhat your reaction to a recent diatribe which is characteristic of a journalist who is well known in the UK, but probably not outside. (That sentence was too long; I was trying to emulate his style!)
That journalist is Jeremy Clarkson, who is known as an arrogant, irresponsible motoring journalist.
Over the years, he has done only a moderately good job of using that persona to hide his intelligence, his common sense, his sentimentality and, even, his wit!
Fortunately, for the rest of us, his failures to hide them completely have been known to result in some valuable contributions; whether this is one of them, you will have to judge for yourself.
If you are live in the UK, or are from the UK and living elsewhere, you will probably “get” his recently written article in the Times Online. Here’s a flavour of the article:
He [Peter Mandelson] announced last week that middle-class children will simply not be allowed into the country’s top universities even if they have 4,000 A-levels, because all the places will be taken by Albanians and guillemots and whatever other stupid bandwagon the conniving idiot has leapt onto in the meantime.
I hate Peter Mandelson. I hate his fondness for extremely pale blue jeans and I hate that preposterous moustache he used to sport in the days when he didn’t bother trying to cover up his left-wing fanaticism. I hate the way he quite literally lords it over us even though he’s resigned in disgrace twice, and now holds an important decision-making job for which he was not elected. Mostly, though, I hate him because his one-man war on the bright and the witty and the successful means that half my friends now seem to be taking leave of their senses.
My guess is that you will either sympathise with it, or not; there is unlikely to be any middle position!
If you have no UK connections, then the whole thing might appear to be complete nonsense. In that case, you might be interested, at least, to know that more and more people in the UK feel like this!
My hand is up, “include me in”, as they say! … and my guess is that Chris Snuggs, of this blog, has both hands up!
By John Lewis
[P.S. more of Clarkson’s superb writing here. P.P.S. Mandelson background for non Brits. Ed.]
Learning from Dogs 