Simon Kuper | Financial Times | 8 February 2013 It's not that the game has got worse. But when you can watch six live matches on television every weekend, you start to realise: most football is boring. Even for the players, it's just a well-paid job. Most of the supposed excitement is manufactured by media coverage. "I’ve got too close to the adored object and seen what it's really like" Ian Jack | Guardian | 6 February 2013 Scotland's voters will be faced with a question of exemplary simplicity and brevity: "Should Scotland be an independent country?" Which, at six words, may well be the shortest referendum question ever posed anywhere. Probably, on this occasion, they will say "no". But it will be a close-run thing. And, next time, the answer will be "yes" Tim Harford | Undercover Economist | 8 February 2013 Gulf state considers $6bn consumer debt write-off. Sounds like a dreadful idea in economic terms. Penalises savers, rewards spendthrifts, encourages more of the same. All true, but are banking bailouts any better? "Kuwait might be talking about rescuing its debtors; in the UK, it’s the official policy of the fiscal and monetary authorities" Anonymous | Telegraph | 8 February 2013 Daughter of a Billingsgate fish porter. Kitchen maid at Hatfield House for Lord Salisbury, who ate milk pudding every day. Cook for for Lord Lothian at Blickling, earning £50 a year in 1936. "She only once entered the dining room — in 1938, when Queen Mary came for lunch and Flo was allowed to slip in to see the table decorations" Dwight Garner | New York Times | 8 February 2013 "I read, wrote a book review, and spent a fair amount of time in the late afternoons in an outdoor hot tub on Deck 8 with a commanding view over the aft. The first evening I soaked there, watching the sky darken and the ship’s wake spread out, I was keenly aware that this was perhaps among the top 200 moments of my life" Thought for the day: "Older is not necessarily wiser. You’re never more open to new experience than when you’re twenty" — George Packer
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