Flashback

US President [described] Burma’s leaders as either “isolated or callous”. “There’s no telling how many people have lost their lives as a result of the slow response,” he told CBS radio. [Source: BBC]

Hmm.

Mishear

So the TV’s on at low volume while I’m doing something else and this Carol Vorderman ad comes on advising people in debt to get slightly more in debt with the company she’s endorsing, and midway through it the start of the phrase “you can rearrange your existing finances”, with all the traffic noise outside, genuinely transmits itself to my ears as “you can wreak vengeance”. I think I prefer this as a model of debt management.

Street briefing

It’s not the content of this story that interests me—house prices to fall; and so they should—but the nature of it. Minister walking into 10 Downing Street carrying confidential briefing notes is photographed from across the street as usual, and the quality of the digital picture is so good that the first page of those notes is entirely legible:

UK house prices could fall “at best” by 5-10% this year, according to secret Cabinet briefing notes accidentally revealed by a housing minister. Caroline Flint’s notes also said: “We can’t know how bad it will get.”

The notes were photographed as Ms Flint carried them into Number 10 for a weekly Cabinet session. [BBC]