A Breath of Fresh Air

I don't usually stay up into the small hours watching election results. I did last night, until it was clear Barack Obama had made it to the White House.

Even on Day One it seems like a breath of fresh air. A positive optimistic vision for the world and idealism, after eight awful gruelling years of W.

Not everyone is celebrating. Melanie Phillips in the Spectator has been warning for ages of the dreadful consequences of electing Obama, and is still at it today. His election has also made life awkward for the Conservative Right. Their adulation of McCain & Palin, especially Palin, has suddenly and miraculously yielded to singing the praises of Obama.

In order to ease their re-education process, they've hatched a cunning project called 'America in the World'. A director of AiW is Tory Tim Montgomerie, and the show was launched this week in London on the eve of the presidential election, by none other than David Cameron. It's aim is to oppose anti-Americanism ! I suppose the idea is to get the message out to the Tory faithful that, well, we've got four years of Obama, like it or not, so we had better get used to saying he's a good egg after all.

It will be interesting to listen to Tory Tim and AiW as the Obama story unfolds.

£172.6 million in Pay & Bonuses since 2000

For doing a good job ? - you might ask.
Well, not exactly. This was the pay of Richard Fuld, according to the BBC News. Mr Fuld was head of Lehman Brothers, the firm that went bust last month. It seems that Mr Fuld also requested multi-million dollar bonuses for other executives, days before the collapse.

What did Mr Fuld have to say ? "I feel horrible about what happened."