To top off a rubbish week...

Ipswich Town failed to sneak into the play-offs despite beating Hull. It was only an outside chance, but you always hope don't you. As well as being a thoroughly depressing period politically this has been a pretty disappointing season on the football front. Time to regroup...

Back in the real world I see that Warren Buffett reckons that the worst is over in terms of the credit crisis, though there is stil pain to come for some homeowners. That follows the Bank of England suggesting last week that the fallout might not be as bad as predicted. I still feel like the crisis is a bit of a phoney war so far. Although there are obvious knock-on effects such as it being harder to get mortgages or other forms of credit, it doesn't seem like serious economic damage is being done. For example I've just read Anatole Kaletsky's piece in the Times where he seems to have reversed himself again. First he suggested the credit crisis was no big deal, then it was very serious, now it is not so bad again. Despite the phoney war Labour is taking a shoeing currently. We could be in the situation in a couple of years where the economy has picked up again, but Labour is still turfed out.

I'd better wash my mouth out after I've said this, but I guess this all about - my favourite - narratives. In the clear abscene of the Government developing its own, external events and the opposition have built one for it and pretty it ain't. As I have bleated on about many times before, once a narrative is in place we typically interpret new information through it, meaning we can put a very different spin on the same information (ie Marcus Bent not converting a chance). I think people have a very gloomy conception of the economic situation because the narrative of a failing government enables them to read any economic news in a very (overly?) negative way.

This is problematic because narratives seem to be pretty sticky. It's an effort for us to revise our interpretive frameworks so we will often seek to ignore or minimise any information that might cause us to do so, and focus on information that confirms our standpoint. Just look at the way that people will often query the veracity of official stats that tell a story that doesn't fit with their own narrative (ie falling crime). I think that means that Labour would need sustained good news to counter the negtive narrative in many voters' heads.

The one plus point is that I still feel that the Tories' resurgence nationally may have pretty flimsly foundations as I don't think people know what they are voting for. I am still not convinced they will give the Tories a go just because they are fed up with Labour without having any clear conception of what the Dark Side might actually do with power. But the longer this goes on the less that might matter.