Boeing

Back in April 1971, a large billboard appeared by a freeway near the Seattle-Tacoma airport. “Will The Last Person Leaving Seattle Turn Out The Lights?” A reference to the Boeing company’s decision to lay off 40,000 local employees, and the ensuing rapid downturn in the area’s economy. Among other problems, the aircraft manufacturer had suffered a crippling blow when the US Senate rejected further funding for its proposed SST supersonic jet, Boeing’s would-be competitor to Concorde. I was reminded of the 1971 slogan just last month, when Seattle’s newly-elected mayor Katie Wilson told a university audience that she was “really, really excited” about the recent passage of a 9.

‘They knocked down our old house in three hours,’ says a friend who has embarked on what he says is a conventional rebuild, nothing Grand Designs about it, on the south coast. ‘But it’s taking forever to get planning permission for the new one. They want reports on everything, from bats to highway impacts: you’d think we’re trying to build a whole huge housing estate.’ And if you do happen to be in the business of building whole huge housing estates, you’ll be eager to know whether Rachel Reeves’s reforms and ‘mandatory targets’ – aimed at delivering 1.5 million new homes in this parliament – will put rockets under the planning system or run straight into a brick wall of nimbyism, exacerbated by lack of capacity and adverse market forces.

Calls for President Joe Biden to drop out of the presidential race are reaching a deafening pitch. The eighty-one-year-old appears to be hard of hearing, however — or else attuned only to the whisperings of his power-hungry wife. Either way, Biden is refusing to budge, ignoring pleas from House Democrats — Representatives Jerry Nadler, Joe Morelle, Adam Smith, Jim Himes and Mark Takano among them — and celebrities alike to throw in the towel. Uber-progressive filmmaker Michael Moore labeled Biden’s campaign “elder abuse” and the president’s excuses for his pathetic debate performance “malarkey.

When a man has three consecutive daughters, people inevitably ask if he intends to “keep going for a boy.” I always handle these questions with the requisite courtesy laugh before speaking honestly: I’m not going for anything beyond what is assigned me by the Most High, who is both funny and just. After six in a row, people start believing you. They will return your courtesy laugh and pause before moving on to other small talk. The bomb won’t go off until they hit the pillow: “Holy moly, what did McMorris do?”   After Friday, I will amend my answer with a hearty “Yes. God is both funny and just.” For nothing would be funnier than if he sent me a son.

The price of gold has been rising since the earliest virus reports from China in December. Adherents regard it as a hedge against inflation, bad government, economic turmoil, weak currencies and negative real returns on financial alternatives, all of which are present threats. For pessimists, this week’s headlines — above-inflation pay rises for 900,000 UK public-sector workers, the EU’s €750 billion debt-fuelled recovery package, the WHO’s report of 260,000 new Covid cases in a single day — all represent arguments for this ultimate safe-haven holding. Too late to jump on the bandwagon?