Peter Hoskin

Danny Finkelstein has the final word on the anti-consumerism and anti-capitalism protests going on today:  "I think that [the anti-consumerists] have looked back at 5,000 years of human history - at pestilence and famine and disease and degradation, at genocide and civil war, at fear and loathing, at bigotry and ignorance, chauvinism and dictatorship - and concluded that our biggest problem is... shopping. ... Instead [progressives] should start with an acceptance that in the long violent saga of mankind we have rarely done anything as benign as going shopping, rarely devised anything as socially advantageous as property rights and the rule of law, rarely enriched the poor or enhanced lives as we did by creating capitalism.

After yesterday's siege in Lahore, there's a revealing item in the Times of India today about how Pakistan's neighbour is changing its attitude towards the local terror threat: "...this attack is forcing India to change the way it has viewed the terror threat. Until now, India has believed that terrorism against India could be stemmed if only the Pakistan state willed to do so. This premise looks facile now... ...India has to quickly redraw its approach to Pakistan. At the highest levels of the government, the new mantra for Pakistan is "containment" or "quarantine" of the terror cancer until it's weeded out. That, of course, will be very, very difficult. And that's why there is deep concern here.

Now, how's this for timing?  With the Jacqui Smith row rumbling on, Parliament has released expenses details for every MP from April 2007 to March 2008 - you can access them here and here.  There are no receipts yet, so we can't see the devils that surely reside in the detail.  But, in the meantime, we know that Gordon Brown claimed £124,454 in total, while David Cameron claimed £148,829.  ConservativeHome have pulled out some more figures here. In other pay-related news, it's been announced that MPs will receive a 2.33 percent pay rise as of April, with Sky revealing that Brown is "ordering" his ministers to take a pay freeze.

David Cameron's speech to the Welsh Tory party conference serves up some more of those "uncomfortable truths" that George Osborne mentioned a few weeks ago.  Rather than just referring to Labour's debt crisis - although he did plenty of that - he talked about Britain's overall "addiction to debt", and suggested that the public need to change their ways for the country's sake: "We’ve seen too many of the ugly things that happen when people duck responsibility. The father who leaves a mother and child to fend for themselves. The banker who clamours for his bonus when he’s bust the bank. The healthy welfare claimant who thinks it’s OK to live off benefits paid by others. Or the businessman who puts profits before the planet. All this irresponsibility must end.

Oh, how Brown will not like this.  According to the Telegraph's Toby Harnden, Barack Obama will take time to meet David Cameron when he comes over to London for the G20 summit next week.  Although the pair have met before, that was before Obama became US President.  And, surely, a meeting now will be taken as a sign that the US administration thinks Brown is on his way out.  Some summit this is turning out to be for Gordon...

Eric Pickles' appearance on Question Time last night (excruciating video here) should make the Tories sit up and take notice of the anti-politician mood that's swirling around the country.  When even one of their more popular figures (at least among the grassroots) can receive such a public lashing over his dubious housing arrangements, it's a clear sign that action needs to be taken - and pretty damn quick.  So far, the Lib Dems have led on the issue of second homes, calling for the second home allowance to be abolished for London MPs.  But much, much more needs to be done to restore people's faith in the political class.  On that front, Tim Montgomerie's right that David Cameron should start pushing for cuts in MPs' and ministers' pay.

We've already mentioned how Mervyn King's recent comments undermine Brown's central "doing everything it takes" vs "do nothing" distinction.  But a document that the Tories have just put out highlights how another of the PM's central attacks is now in tatters.  Its theme is how Brown has "taken" the Tories' "advice", now that he seems to have backed down on another fiscal stimulus.  This line cuts right through the "no time for a novice" jibe, and subverts the teacher and pupil relationship that Brown has tried to cultivate in PMQs recently (cf, from a couple of weeks ago, his "Unprecedented means without precedent; global means across the world..." monologue).  Brown's strategies, big and small, really do seem to have been shot to pieces this week.