We have tickets for a talk by Dr Ben Broadbent, deputy head of the Bank of England, at the London School of Economics. The talk is free, but they're expecting more people wishing to attend than there will be seats, so they've been allocated randomly. At least that's the theory. It's in the Hong Kong Theatre at Clement House, which is not a very large auditorium, but there are still empty seats when the talk starts, so our both having tickets is down to over optimism on their part, not good luck on ours. The topic is Brexit and Interest Rates, and unfortunately we're rather more interested in the Brexit bit than the interest rates. But still currency exchange is important and this is Mark Carney's 2IC.
Well, those who didn't apply for tickets may have known something we didn't. The event is an hour, including fifteen minutes for questions, and that's more than enough. The worst is that the man is difficult to hear, and this doesn't seem to be down to the sound system. We're in the second row, probably within thirty feet of him and he is using the Mike, but we probably catch no more than fifty percent of what he says. J has the advantage of being better educated than I in economics, but this advantage is more or less negated by his having worse hearing. Not the first time we've encountered this at the LSE, and not down to old age either. There seem to be quite a lot of people with a great deal of knowledge and no presentation skills at all. In all fairness, Dr Broadbent may not have to present his ideas to an audience very often. But he does engage in a great deal of mumbling, punctuated by muttered asides. Would have been worse if it hadn't been for the natural non-committal reticence of the professional economist, so no great loss.
I tell J as we leave that I do know a very good pub nearby - just round behind the Courts of Justice, but fail to spark any interest. He simply doesn't regard this as beer drinking weather and the lure of real ale is ineffective.
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