Here at Sloggers’ Roost today, one switched around door openings, emptied rooms prior to further renewal, mortared the walls of a future vegetable patch, threw endless pine cones to amuse a canine guest, did shopping, spent three hours in the dentist’s chair, and then felt tired. The tiredness did not surprise me at all.

But the global ramifications of insane economic ideas are a 24/7 surprise to the media, political and bureaucratic class.

The  International Energy Agency (IEA) dropped a ‘surprising bombshell’ yesterday by ‘revealing’ that the economic prospects for Europe and China are poor…and thus the outlook for oil prices is dire. The agency found this falloff in demand ‘remarkable’.

Why?

Not unrelated to the plunge in energy demand, it seems that more than 4,000 Russian tourists holidaying
in Greece may be in need of assistance in order to return home, following the collapse of several holiday providers and their agencies. No doubt this came as a surprise to the FT.

In turn, many Brits were surprised that the right-wing pro-Union UK press piled on the appalling consequences of foolish ideas about the sort of Scottish independence certain to result in children with five noses and a kilt where the reproductive organs should be. An American Slogger pronounced herself surprised by the blatant falsification of opinion polls on the subject.

Why?

And in other news….the Sprouts in Brussels expressed surprise at the Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s prediction that his economy would grow “only at around 0%” in 2014. Hang on there Matt old top, you can’t have growth only at 0%, otherwise it ain’t growth no more, is it?

Rule Number One: don’t ever be surprised. It looks bad, and frightens the populace.

Earlier at The Slog: Thoughts on giving media gargoyles carte blanche