Art Can Help A Town By Attracting

In Principle, There Are Only Three Main Components Of Spending That Much Matter To Monetary Policy: Consumer Spending, Business Investment And Exports And Trade.

Now I Can Broadcast To An Audience Of Several Million People On The 'today' Programme. I Can Talk About The Day's News. But On Radio, Believe It Or Not, We Have Notes And Scripts. And While We Might Ad Lib The Odd Wryly Amusing Asides, They Come At The Frequency Of A Suburban Bus. About One Every 90 Minutes.

My Instinct Is To Assume That We Consumers Are An Inconsistent Bunch. We Like Competition If It Delivers Low Prices, But Grumble If It Delivers The Bad News That Prices Need To Go Up.

Being Funny, It Turns Out, Is Like Being A Bank. It's A Confidence Trick. As Long As Everyone Believes In You, You Are Fine.

The Fact That Radio Is So Hopeless At Delivering Data Makes It An Uncluttered Medium, Offering The Basic Story Without The Detailed Trappings. But It Does Mean That If Data Is Important, Radio Is Probably Not Your Place.