Two not so random stories, and Brown's moral compass

1) The ludicrous Tessa Jowell insists, through her department, that: We are very confident that the £9.3 billion funding package is robust and will cover both delivering the venues and facilities for the Games and leave a legacy for London and the UK. There is a substantial contingency within the overall budget to cover against costs rising and we believe that will be sufficient.Is there anyone out there in the real world who believes that there is a cat in hell's chance of the budget sticking at £9.3 billion (which is itself, don't forget, 291% more than the original costing of £2.375 billion)? Do they think we are all idiots? The Olympics is a money pit the like of which makes every other example of government waste look positively parsimonious.

2) Gordon Brown, it seems has overruled his Cabinet over plans to bail out thousands of pensioners whose employers went bust. Ministers had promised £725million to help more than 125,000 workers whose company pension schemes collapsed. But the Prime Minister has risked a major Cabinet split by vetoing the plan. Welcome to Gordon Brown's moral compass. It's fine to throw an unlimited pot of billions of pounds of our money paying for people to run around in a converted dump. But finding a fraction of that money to do something for 125,000 people who have worked all their lives in good faith and whose companies have gone bust, and who now have no pension, is beyond the pale.

Pierre Mendes-France said that to govern is to chose. We know how Gordon Brown chooses to spend our money.