Obsolete

• Congratulations are in order for both Channel 4 and the BBC, whom having commissioned documentaries on the Work Capability Assessment and how it's being implemented by ATOS Healthcare and the Department for Work and Pensions (i.e. disgracefully), not only decided that the first Monday during the Olympics was the best time to show them, but that one would follow the other. Dispatches thus went out at 8pm, with Panorama following on BBC2 at 8:30. Truly inspired scheduling, and simply bound to alter the increasing perception, encouraged by both government and the tabloids that everyone on sickness benefits is a workshy scrounger.


• Yesterday saw the attorney general Dominic Grieve announce he was vetoing an order from the Information Commissioner to release the minutes of cabinet meetings in the lead up to the Iraq war. He reached his decision after consulting not just former Labour ministers and the current cabinet, but also Ed Miliband. So much for a new beginning on past mistakes there then.

• House prices falling (not necessarily a bad thing), a drop in disposable income, the worst manufacturing figures for more than three years, and away from the Olympics, London is predictably deserted. More evidence of the economic prowess of the coalition, and no doubt when the growth figures for the third quarter are released and we're still in recession ministers will be blaming the games, having claimed right up to the last minute that they would provide a fillip.
  

Labels: burying bad news, miscellany, Olympics, silly season