Findings suggest that there is much waiting and hiding, but little progress.

As most people learn over time, a crackdown is the overture to a cock-up. So it is that the people at Health have ordered a crackdown on waiting lists in the NHS. This will of course require Andrew Lanlsey to hire more civil servants in order to shift the waiting-list segments around, and give Dave a stat to quote some time soon at PMQs.

In the same vein is the decision (by whom?) to delay the Chilcot report ‘by at least six months’ in order to ensure that Crash 2 will push it off the front pages….and all the grubby bits can be edited out of the secret documents. Sir John Chilcot expressed his frustration about the Iraq  committee’s inability to publish certain classified documents relating to Iraq policy throughout its existence, but the main sticking point is, I’m told, stuff that pretty clearly nails Blair and – by inference, Campbell – as having more or less invented the entire reason(s) for war…and then perverted the course of justice.

With the deadline less than a week away, members of a 12-member Congressional  “super committee” in the States are getting nowhere towards finding $1.2 trillion in budget savings over 10 years. They’re going round in the same circles that derailed earlier efforts to rein in the growing national deficit, which ballooned above $15 trillion earlier this week. Also, as regular readers will know, this whole problem was started by the Europeans anyway, so the net outcome will probably be a bill being sent to Brussels, rather than a Bill being passed to put America’s house in order.

Most of the British Incompetariate are also busy hiding behind the eurozone thing. I use the word ‘thing’ now because I’ve run out of all the other possibilities. Bank of England boss Sir Mervyn King says things are being made worse by the eurozone thing, which is why he’s had to halve his gdp forecast and get on with more QE. Again. To be fair to Merv, he also blames “world energy prices … the need to rebalance the UK economy, and the cost of the financial crisis in terms of lower productivity” but it will be apparent to those paying attention that two of these three factors are down to those inside our borders to sort out. He adds that flatlining output “will continue until next summer”, at which point something very good will happen. Dave also says things are being made worse by the eurozone thing, and says the ECB needs to empty itself in order to bail out the EU’s political and banking classes. Sir Merv holds the view that the ECB shouldn’t do that under any circumstances, a view he shares with Merkel, Schauble, Trichet and Draghi. Dave’s view is shared by Sarkozy. The choice is yours.

There are two ways a eurobank can comply with the new recapitalisation rules. It can (a) increase its capital bulwark to make itself safer in the face of a debt Tsunami; or – much easier – (b) reduce the entire balance sheet so that the proportion of capital comes up to scratch as a percentage of the whole. The slight problem with (b) is that it offers no protection against a toxic debt disaster….and means the bank has no money to lend in order to help kick-start the EU economy. Guess which option most of the banks have taken. That concludes today’s good news from the eurozone. Everyone says the new Greek and Italian governments face overwhelming odds, French and Spanish borrowing costs continue to rise, most of ClubMed is in deep recession, European stock markets are sliding alarmingly, and the price of oil is going up in the region. Christine Lagarde observed that “Lenders, the IMF and investors expect political clarity…..there are clearly rumours, allegations, and expectations, and that confusion is particularly conducive to volatilities”. Ms Lagarde omitted to say whether she was referring to Greece, Italy, the whole of ClubMed, Franco-German relations, IMF politics, or her own investigation by the French authorities in relation to Sarkozy using her as a billion-euro bagman.

There is a good story in the works: more later.