Come in number 9, your time is up

There is a delightful irony in the fall from grace of the mythic Eliot Spitzer. As James Forsyth noted this afternoon in his Coffee House post , Spitzer’s done,

The problem for Spitzer is not just that he has been caught in a sex scandal but that he has based his political career on his own integrity; without it, he is nothing.

It has the makings of Greek tragedy, or possibly high farce. And in case you missed it, here is the New York Observer:

On the afternoon of March 10, 2008, The New York Times published a story positing a link between New York governor Eliot Spitzer and an ongoing investigation of a prostitution ring.

It was later confirmed that affidavits referring to one of the prostitute’s clients, Client No. 9, were referring to the Governor.

Within a couple of hours, Gov. Spitzer appeared with his wife, Silda Wall Spitzer, at his Manhattan offices and, without specifying what he’d done wrong, admitted that he had been very, very bad and needed to regain the trust of his family. Reporters expected him to resign during his speech, but he didn’t.

It just brought that nursery rhyme to mind: “And when he was good, he was very, very good, but when he was bad, he was horrid”.

A modern man

Leaving aside whether or not A levels (or more correctly A2s) are getting easier, the youngest (a boy) is now only concerned that this summer he beats his four sisters. It is a percentage game. I have pointed out to him that even if he gets better grades, this will not make him the most intelligent of the five. His answer was that I lacked male solidarity!

Great Crested Grebes

One of the discoveries this past year has been the writing of Mark Cocker. In the 1970s I never missed Harry Griffin’s Country Diary in The Guardian, and walking in the Lake District in the early autumn of 2005, Caroline bought me A Lifetime of Mountains, Martin Wainwright’s selection of Harry Griffin’s best columns. It was reading those that persuaded me to begin these Dartmoor Letters. But it was not until I bought Caroline A Tiger in the Sand, in anticipation of our birding week in North Norfolk in late January, that I realised that Mark Cocker has been a regular Country Diary columnist for nearly twenty years. It shows how long it has been since I read The Guardian (and is almost enough to make me change the daily paper).

In his Introduction, Cocker speaks of the “emotional charge of the encounter, the deep fulfilment that flows from our engagement with our fellow creatures”. As we walked up at the Hennock reservoirs this morning, I thought of the piece I had just read, and in particular

“Nothing we do to capture our encounters can quite match up to the living reality. It will always evade and exceed our imaginations, whether it is a tiger in the jungle or a blackbird in the garden. This is where I believe writing on nature, in its various forms, is wholly distinct from a particular kind of wildlife television. Moving images of wildlife often far exceed, in terms of dramatic content and physical closeness, our own modest experiences of nature. They leave nothing unspoken, nor hint at any wider experience and, in a way, seek to replace our experience of the genuine article and become a substitute satisfaction.”

Last Sunday we had also been at Hennock but then in late afternoon. As well as seeing six plus Bullfinches, we also saw Crossbills in the treetops in the plantation alongside Tottiford Reservoir. This was a first for us at the Reservoirs. Hoping to see the Crossbills again, we drove this morning to Trenchford. As it turned out, no Bullfinches and no Crossbills. But instead we watched a pair of Great Crested Grebes, close to the bridge over the Trenchford stream, beginning their courtship. At one moment necks intertwined, at another synchronised diving; water weed offered by one to the other and then returned. It was quite magical.

Another nail in the coffin of DB

Further to my post earlier in the week, Matching pension liabilities, the story that led the front page of the FT today, Companies face bigger pensions risk levy, points up the problem and choices that employers with defined benefits schemes face. One further thought. Norma Cohen suggests that the effect of proposals signposted by Partha Dasgupta, the chief executive of the PPF could

“prompt schemes to pare the billions they have invested in equities and would likely lead to demands the government do much more of its borrowing in long-term index-linked gilts that mirror the movements in pension liabilities more closely than any other asset class.”

And that will, in time, radically change the investor profile of many of our leading companies.

Still all to play for

We are still waiting for the fat lady to sing. An excellent analysis in Economist.com on the Texas and Ohio Primaries

What next? The nomination will go to the person who can amass 2,025 delegates. Before Tuesday Mr Obama led in the delegate count, but neither candidate would have been able to reach the magic number without superdelegates. That has not changed. So the campaigns now have to work out how to woo the superdelegates. Mrs Clinton can point to a victory in a state like Ohio and say that she can swing it to the Democratic column in November, but Mr Obama can point to his big success in Virginia and make a similar argument. Right now it seems that Mr Obama will be able to claim a lead in raw popular votes, but Mrs Clinton can point to her successes in primaries to Mr Obama’s successes in caucuses. The race between Mrs Clinton and Mr Obama will continue, and some Democrats will regret that. But Mrs Clinton has undoubtedly earned the right to be there.

It will be a long fight through the early summer, and the outcome is uncertain. Meanwhile John McCain has the Republican nomination, and George Bush’s endorsement (with the obligatory photo opportunity in the White House Rose Garden). McCain may need this to burnish his conservative credentials, but my bet is that that photo will appear in Democratic campaign ads in due course. Would you really want to be linked to the least successful US President in living memory (and that list includes both Nixon and Carter).