(This week in 1991: Labour tells lies, Bush throws away his arms, BT gives up on its mobile phone idea, Wales are glad they're not playing the whole of Samoa, and an unhappy parrot-owner goes to court. There are profiles of Stevie Wonder, Afrika Bambaata, Marc Cohn, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and songs from Shakespears Sister and Kiri Te Kanawa.)

After three months of tedium, our long nightmare is finally over. In Scotland, there's a new number one single, as Oceanic's Insanity takes over at the top. On the MRIB Network Chart, and on the ITV Chart Show there's a new number one, as the Scorpions' Wind of change displaces Bryan Adams performing (Everything I do) I do it for you. On the Gallup chart, sadly, there's no difference: Boring Bryan sells for a fourteenth, tooth-grindingly tedious week.

Speaking of tooth-grindingly tedious, Simply Red crash into the top of the albums chart with Stars, beating out Prince's Diamonds and Pearls, and Tina Tuner's singles collection Simply the Best. Bryan is down to number 4. New at 7 is IRS's collection The Best of REM, and The Pogues come in at 11 with their best-of. A single will be released later in the year. Bros's third and final album, Changing Faces, comes in at 18.

| Permanent link

Canadian Election News

From the Department of It's A Bit Late, Stephen Harpie has finally got round to releasing his party's manifesto. Evidently, the Conservative-Reform Alliance Party's Manifesto Operations Panel was all geared up for the scheduled election in October 2009, and was wrong-footed by the outgoing PM's call for an early poll. Well, it takes a bit of time to have these policies shipped over from Australia...

The CRAP-MOP's policies include $400m in loans to the car and planes sector, abolish tariffs on imported machinery, and not altering subsidies to the arts. This was a tremendous talking point earlier in the campaign, with the Bloc Québecois saying that this was an attack against the Distinct Society. There's no mention of a policy to deal with the current financial turbulence. Again, it takes a bit of time to have these policies shipped over from Australia.

Speaking of plagarists, Stéphane Dion has been going on about how his Liberals are a big tent party. Here, he's parroting ancien British prime minister Mister Tony Blair, who said in 1997 that his party would act as a big tent. And, just like 1997, there's been discussion of strategic voting by environmentalists.

Some significant changes in the polls show that this won't be another 1997 (UK) or even a 1997 (CA). The Conservative vote in Québec has slumped following Stephen Harpie's pisspoor performance in the debates, and the Liberals have picked up most of the slack. The NDP have maintained their strong advance in Québec, and the Greens are polling about 8% nationwide.

The DAVIDBUTLER-CA model currently shows the Conservatives losing four hyper-marginals to the Liberals, and four seats to the Bloc on swings of about 3½%. The Liberals lose a couple of seats to the NDP, but gain three marginals from the Bloc. Right now, we're still projecting the Conservatives to be the largest party, but a direct transfer of less than 1% will put M. Dion's lot on top.

This election is Too Close To Call

Good morning, part-nationalisation fans

Another day, another bailout. Alistair Chancellor announced the following:

£250md to guarantee interbank lending. At the moment, banks are only prepared to lend to each other overnight. Not for a year, not for a month, not even for a year. This money will be available so that if Bank A loans its money to Bank B, then Bank B goes pop, Bank A won't be out of pocket.

£50md is available to buy preference shares of major banks. These come with strings attached: the bankers in charge will have to accept pay cuts, the government will be able to write the rules like any shareholder, and will receive any dividends.

An extra £100md into the Special Liquidity Scheme, swapping dubious loans for government bonds. This takes the SLS to a total of £200md.

In the medium-to-long term, this should be much cheaper than it looks. The lending guarantee may not be required, but is being allocated right now. The preference shares money will be spent - probably £25md in the very near future. The hope is that the combination of dividends and sales of the shares will recoup that expenditure. And the SLS effectively takes some of the mortgage debt onto the government books. When people make their payments to the banks, some of that money will return to the government.

There's also been a reduction in the base rates. If we're not mistaken, this is also a reduction in the overnight deposit rate for the central banks. Rather than getting an annualised 5% on overnight deposits to the Bank of England, they're now only getting 4½%. It's less attractive to lend the money to the safe-as-houses BoE, and might be more attractive to lend money to other banks. The key rates will be the overnight rates, and the fix at 11am already feels like ancient history.

Our gut feeling is that there's not much more panic to come. The remaining banks have access to lines of credit, there is no reason to suspect that they'll go pop. All it'll take is a few days of quiet, no major activity, no more banks running into trouble, for things to calm down a little. However, we cannot be sure that this is anything other than our innate optimism about the human spirit, and we cannot ignore the fact that many of the teenage scribblers won't have been around for the crash of 1987. Or even the slump of 2001.

| Permanent link

Zac Bjelogrlic of the BBC goes on about a pro-YADIS meeting they've been to. It's certainly true that most players are involved in YADIS in case it turns into the new gold standard, without any positive expectation that it will be anything more than mildly interesting. We agree that it's currently a toy for geeks and techies. We disagree with his suggestion that it's something the BBC should be promoting as a social good.

He points to proposed security changes in the YADIS model. These do not resolve Bradley Fitzpatrick's fundamental design flaw. YADIS authenticates one website to another by passing a particular URL, and presumes that controlling a URL is sufficient to act as a credential. While controlling a particular URL has some power, it is not, and should not be, conflated with a reliable assertion of identity.

Why would the security proposals go long about multi-factor authentication, if they don't fundamentally accept that YADIS isn't sufficient to establish identity? So if YADIS isn't sufficient to establish identity, we have to ask if it is actually necessary. Could we not have - oh - a different signon for each server? Or a central clearing house for logons, such as the one proposed by Microsoft about ten years ago.

Mr. Bjelogrlic correctly identifies that the current YADIS is far too difficult for people to use. It may be simple, but it's not obvious, and it's not gaining significant traction. We're not sure why Radio Pop uses YADIS, but neither is there a particular reason not to. We don't particularly agree with the assertion that YADIS enables localised information. It might have done if it had been part of a FOAF file, but Fitzpatrick moved away from that model after about two days. Another stunningly wrong-headed move from the pie-eyed incompetent.

None of the proposed changes are intended to address the huge privacy problems inherent in the system. We're particularly concerned about the fact that YADIS providers can and do keep a list of every site you validate against, and the fact that some YADIS providers force people to trust sites they do not actually trust. These are huge flaws in the system; the latter, in particular, strikes us as a complete show-stopper.

We said in June that we cannot recommend anyone uses YADIS beyond the sort of utterly trivial flim-flammery that you don't mind losing if compromised. We stand by this comment, and we still value our privacy and that of our readers ahead of any minor convenience gains. While the revised implementation may yet be made slightly more resistant to phishing, it still does not address our concerns about privacy. It is still a DNS lookup with bells and whistles.

Is it the sort of thing that the BBC should be looking at? Possibly, but on the same level as other speculative projects. It's the technological equivalent of those one-shot drama pilots on BBC3 earlier in the year. We'd sooner see something of obvious value to all, like getting on with the integration of INFAX with /programmes we were promised last year.

| Permanent link

A high and dark man she had never seen before. In which we can point and laugh at the way a certain advertising brokerage can't tell the difference between Norway, Ireland, and Canada. Has it never watched Eurosong? Can it not discern the slightest difference between Norway (fairies dancing twinkle-toed in the glade), Canada (a buck-toothed big-haired loon) and Ireland (a puppet turkey)?

Silly: Take our survey. No, really, do.

We're pretty chuffed with this week's editions of Blue Peter. A short piece about lions, then a decent race between new girl Helen Skelton in a kayak, new boy Joel Defries on a bicycle, and a train. Wednesday had science tricks: getting a sachet of tomato sauce to fall down a bottle of water without visible cause, Joel running on custard and being utterly upstaged by the cats. Plus cross-promotions for The Sarah Jane Adventures and Merlin. We said from day one that that Zoe Salmon wasn't any good, and so it's proven: as soon as she goes, the show becomes top-notch telly again.

Petrol prices finally changed on Wednesday:

Unleaded: 108p (3 Sep: 112p)
  Diesel: 120p (3 Sep: 124p)

Swingometer Basics Explained: 1) What Is A Swing?

Language Log gets its kecks in a twist over the concept of seats that might change hands at the forthcoming election. It really is very simple. Let us give some examples. Jonquière — Alma is a marginal seat, as the CRAP majority over the BQ is 13%. The margin between the two parties is small enough that the seat could change hands on Wednesday. Pontiac is a more marginal seat, as the majority is 5%. It is more likely that Pontiac would go to the Bloc. Louis-Hébert is the most marginal seat, the majority is just 0.39%.

Where do swings enter into it? Swing is a measure of how many voters need to defect from one party to another to change the result. It would require a swing of 0.2% from CRAP to BQ for Louis-Hébert to fall. Two voters in 1000 stop voting for the CRAP, the same voters start voting for the BQ, and the largest single vote in the seat is for the Bloc. Similarly, it would require a 2.5% swing for Pontiac to go, and 6.5% for Jonquière — Alma to become a Bloc seat. All of these are within the realm of possibility.

The Most Swing Seats that Language Log talks about? Well, those would be the seats that saw the largest swing, the greatest difference between the vote last time and their vote this time. These might reward newly-elected MPs, or support popular new candidates, or act against unpopular members. Not all of these largest swings will cause a change in control - for instance, in the UK in 2001, the greatest swing was 9.77% in Brent North, where a new Labour MP from the previous election proved far more popular than his opponents. It wasn't a marginal before, it certainly isn't now.

In the grand scheme of things, we tend not to talk about the largest swing in a single seat, because it tends not to be very important to the bigger picture. The concept of swing, and the list of marginals, they're far more important.

| Permanent link

We note the death of Jörg Haider, leader of the Alliance for the Future of Austria party. His group, along with the equally-racist Freedom Party, secured almost a third of votes in the recent federal elections, but were expected to be frozen out of government. The conspiracy theories are already doing the rounds.

In church news: The Gospel According to Father Ted, and other media-based religious ideas.

Book news

Stephen Foley reminds us of the wisdom behind The Great Crash 1929. We had to read an economics book for a course at university, and picked out this tome, primarily because it was a slimline 220 pages. We addressed ourselves to Galbraith's arguments, offered cogent arguments for and against, and made the point that, in the point where politics and economics cross over, it is always dangerous to forget. The lecturer was a notoriously harsh marker, but still gave a B for the essay, suggesting that we might have criticised Galbraith's economic prescriptions a little more harshly, as all the professionals did at the time. The great thing about being a university lecturer is that your students will be gone in three years, and you'll never have to admit that they might be right and the herd you were following was wrong. The original book (in its current imprint.)

John Stevens on why the UK should join the euro. Or, why the UK may have to join the euro.

Pop news

We can't be bothered to track the UK chart every week, it gets increasingly tedious. Over, then, to Germany. Not to a different number one, Pink's So what is the chart-topper there as it is here, displacing Katy Perry's I kissed a girl. It's Pink's first solo number one, and part of an all-female top three, as Amy MacDonald slips in with This is the life. She may be hideously uncool in the UK, and ignored to death by the hipsters at Radio 1, but Amy is one of the biggest British pop stars on the continent. If Mika turns down Eurovision, we vote MacDonald. Number 5 is another piece of British talent, Guru Josh, with a re-recording of Infinity. The original was absolutely massive in 1990, and this re-working - as best we can tell, the original instrumentation plus a new vocal - still hits the mark.

Germany's big hitmakers at the moment are power pop duo Rosenstolz, Gib mir sonne is their first hit off their new album Die Suche geht weiter, which is new at number 1 this week. Peter Fox and Thomas Godoj came off this year's Deutschland Sitcht Das Superstar (Pop Idle Germany), and both are in the current top 20, and Fox's album Stadtaffe is in at 4. Rappers Bushido are in the top ten, so is Söhne Mannheims, a superstar group including Xavier Naidoo, who seems to have been around for ages. Their album, Wettsingen in Schwetzingen, is number 2

But not as long as the people we find at number 11: Scooter (established 1994) and Status Quo (est. 1300BC) on one record. Jump that rock (whatever you want) does exactly what it sounds like it does, the familiar guitar riffs of ver Quo and the familiar top-of-his-bark shouting by that mad bloke. It's got to be better than Nessun dorma, in the version by Paul Potts from Britain's Got Talent (Großbritain das hat nicht tasten). Scandinavian pop sells well in Germany - The Rasmus are top 20 with their new single Living in a world without you, and September's Cry for you is new at number 16.

Lower down, squeaky-voiced pop princess Annett Louisan is new at 38 with Drück die 1, and it's only a surprise that she hasn't made her monthly appearance on DW-TV's PopXport programme. Yet. Oasis have a chart position that equates with The shock of the lightning's quality, new at 48, and behind Amy MacDonald's Mr rock 'n' roll. The latter song has been on release since March, never risen above number 21, but has spent over half-a-year in the top 40.

Behind Rosenstolz, Söhne Mannheims, Metallica, and Peter Fox in the album charts comes Mario Barth, about whom we know absolutely nothing. Sorry, tush. Amy MacDonald's number 6, and new at 9 comes Monrose with I Am. It's the Difficult Second Album™ for the Popstars '06 winners, whose light and cheery pop can perhaps best be compared to the Council Estate Slappers. The lead single hasn't done much, but we can only hope that their career doesn't follow that of the original Popstars, No Angels.

| Permanent link

• On Glickoblog: UEFA Cup Groups, 2008 This year's UEFA Cup groups, tables for the rest of Europe, and kicking the cogs on the Upset-o-meter.
• Today's Top Teams The first Top 22 of the season, plus news from Russia and Charlton.
• World Cup Waving Qualifying phase 1 ends in Africa, and results from Europe.
• Thanks for the upsets Two of the top three NCAA-ball sides lose, we name our Unexpected Bowl Team of the Season, and preview the rest of the matches in the MA, SB, and XX leagues. The top five contains some more familiar names, and NASN gets us annoyed again...
• On Ice Crystals: Passer partout Good news for a sparrow, more on Hole in the Wall and Blue Peter, seasonal hits, Iceland's failure, John Humphrys's failure, and only an easy connection.

Aside from a brief period of showers on Tuesday morning, this was a fine and increasingly warm week. There was a brief ground frost in the early hours of Monday, but nighttime lows by the week-end were comfortably over 10°C. The outlook for next week shows a front becoming stationary over the English midlands on Monday and Tuesday, then a complex but shallow low will form over the southern parts. This will move swiftly to the north-east, and by Thursday, the Azores High is expected to dominate conditions. After the recent warmth, temperatures will fall to the seasonal norms, so do wrap up.

06 Mo cloud              0/13
07 Tu showers           13/17, 4.0
08 We sunny spells       7/15, 0.5
09 Th sun                4/15
10 Fr sun               12/17
11 Sa sun to cloud      11/17
12 Su sun                8/20

Rainfall in October: 46mm; monthly average: 69mm

Degree cooling days: 114
2007: 91/ 91
2006: 360/360
2005: 238/238
2004: 198/198
2003: 328/328

Degree heating days: 4½
2007: 2½/809½
2006: 0/499
2005: 0/684
2004: 0/556
2003: 4½/754

| Permanent link