Clarissa Tan

In the evenings the kidneys came. The helicopter, a bright yellow, would land on the grey cement disc, its blades chopping slower, slower, slow — stop. People in blue scurried from an opening in the building and ran towards the aircraft, hauling from it boxes and bags. These containers held hearts, lungs, livers. The organs were brought into the body of the main building then dispatched in all directions. I could see all this from the high window of my room in Siena. I also saw spectacular Tuscan sunsets, and if it weren’t for the chunky, rounded plastic furniture in the room and the drips in my arms, I would have thought I was in a smart hotel.

How many of history’s great revolutions were sparked by sheer, human hunger? In 2008, global food prices spiked, with the cost of basic crops doubling. In the two years that followed, Egyptians saw their food prices increase by some 40 per cent – in 2011, as we know, the Arab Spring broke across the Middle East, triggered by the self-immolation of a Tunisian food seller. How likely are such spates of unrest to happen again? Very likely, given that – due to the worst drought in the US in living memory – the price of wheat and maize have soared 50 per cent in past weeks, and the G20 may hold an emergency meeting on food very soon. We like to think of the Arab Spring as being the pure cry of an oppressed people for lofty ideals such as freedom, equality and democracy.

The Robin Hood tax has galloped into France, and once again Britain is being pressured to introduce the same thing in its financial sector. It's a thankless job defending the City at the moment, what with UK banks mired in one scandal after another and Libor-gate still unresolved, but the UK must stand firm in rejecting a tax that, in the words of George Osborne, would be 'economic suicide for Britain'. François Hollande has slapped a 0.2 per cent levy on share trading in France, a precursor to a wider European law. Technically a financial transactions tax, 'Robin Hood' taxes are so-called because they aim to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor.

Hilary Mantel has just been long-listed for the Booker Prize for Bring Up the Bodies, her brilliant follow-up to Wolf Hall, which netted the coveted Booker itself in 2009. We at The Spectator can't trumpet this enough - you see, Hilary was the first-ever winner of our Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize in 1987. The prize, awarded for 'the most acute and profound observation of a culture alien to the writer', is named after the author of Fireflies and North of South, the late younger brother of VS Naipaul. In 2007, we thought we'd be giving our last-ever Shiva Naipaul award, but we have decided to revive the annual prize, which this year will be judged by Colin Thubron and Joanna Kavenna.

Just as Mervyn King, as Isabel flags in her blog, is being dragged into the Libor scandal, comes a truly remarkable article from the FT headlined 'The bank that roared'. This bank, in case you are wondering, refers to the Bank of England. The FT says the central bank - led by the good ol' Governor - is 'back in charge' and showing that 'it means business'. The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, which in past years had been taking a more 'laissez-faire' approach to bank funding and lending, is firmly in the saddle once again. The BoE has a 'new attitude' and is now 'more muscular'. By way of illustrating this, the FT describes how Mervyn on 2 July called in Barclays chairman Marcus Agius and 'handed him the regulatory equivalent of a loaded revolver'.

Last Thursday Mervyn King said ‘the case for further monetary easing is growing’, and today’s surprise inflation figures give the Governor and his policymakers more leeway to introduce the next round of QE, probably as early as next month. Consumer price inflation fell to 2.8 per cent in May from 3.0 per cent in April, below analysts’ average forecast of a flat reading. It’s the weakest monthly inflation since November 2009, with the main contributors being falling food and oil prices. This is good news indeed, especially given that inflation has been – and still is – eroding savers’ earnings by about 8 per cent over five years.

Two bits of interesting news yesterday: 1. France – while the eurozone is in financial meltdown – is allowing some of its workers to retire early; 2. China – while the eurozone is in financial meltdown – is on a shopping spree, buying European assets on the cheap. Perhaps there we have, in a nutshell, the pattern of what is to follow in the coming months. Francois Hollande’s lowering of the pension age by two years to 60 applies to only a small class of workers, but it appears to be just the start of a slew of changes to employment laws — today, his government announced it would make it more expensive for companies to lay off workers.

We’re all familiar with the eurozone boom-bust news cycle by now. First, there are reports of more European banks in trouble, then news of governments seeking bailouts, closely followed by speculation over the future of the euro. Then, as if to crown it all, there will be news that global political leaders and finance ministers are about to hop on planes to attend one G-Digit meeting or another. This time, as it happens, it’s the G20, in about a fortnight’s time, in Mexico.   With Spain in deep financial crisis, German banks downgraded by Moody’s, the US economy apparently stuck in a rut and the Chinese growth engine sputtering, are such international summits more, or less, necessary than ever?

It was beautiful and a bit strange this morning, sitting in St Paul's Cathedral with the rest of the congregation, waiting for the Queen to make her entrance for the national thanksgiving service. We were hushed and awed — I was up in the press gallery — under the great dome of the stupendous cathedral. This was a religious occasion, yet there was no escaping the fact that it was also a high society event, everyone in their finest feathers. A reporter next to me whispered to her colleague the details of the outfit Her Majesty would be wearing (something ‘mint green, Swarovski-studded’) and the designer brands of the Duchess of Cambridge's dress and hat. We in the press pack were not, as a whole, aligning ourselves to the things of the spirit.

Even as the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee BBC Concert rocked on outside Buckingham Palace (amid the slightly worrying news that the Duke of Edinburgh is in hospital), some bad economic news came in — rating agency Egan-Jones has cut the UK’s credit rating to AA-minus with a negative outlook, from AA. ‘The over-riding concern is whether the country will be able to continue to cut its deficit in the face of weaker economic conditions and a possible deterioration in the country's financial sector,’ Egan-Jones said in its statement, according to Reuters. ‘Unfortunately, we expect that the UK's debt-GDP [ratio] will continue to rise and the country will remain pressed.

Even in the most economically tumultuous of times, there are people who stand to make money — some of them literally. British money printer De La Rue has told Reuters it’s made contingency plans to print drachma notes, in case Greece makes a euro exit. If Greece leaves the common-currency zone, there’d be such a huge demand for drachmas that Athens may have to outsource its money-making to companies abroad, says the unnamed industry source (one assumes hopefully). ‘It will be a huge job which the state printing works will do, but they will probably pull in some additional volume from outside and De La Rue will be in with a chance,’ the source tells Reuters.