We get occasional blackouts here in our estate. J is not so sure, but I think they’re for maintenance purposes because (a) they always seem to happen at around 8pm, (b) about once a month, (c) for less than an hour.

The last blackout was last night. We escorted the kids to their bedroom and hung around until electricity was restored and firmly vetoed the idea of telling ghost stories. (With two highly-strung children, this is something you do NOT want to indulge in.) A few minutes was taken up by J playing flashlight signals with Mr L, who lives in a house about half a kilometre away, and then it was down to sweating and coming up with another family-inclusive way to pass the time.

Little Dinosaur, it turns out, is a champion at “I Spy” because nobody has yet succeeded in guessing what she can see.

“I spy with my little eye something beginning with … P.”
“Pencil.”
“No.”
“Pillow.”
“No.”
“Pillar.”
“No.”
“Poster. Pussy-cat. Pen.”
“Nope, nope, nope.”
“Aw, we give up. What is it?”
“Sharpener.”

The Wast gets abstract.

“I spy with my little eye something beginning with … E!”
And it turns out to be electricity, which we have none of at that time.

I just got to the point of putting my fingers over the torch so we [EDIT: cancould] see through them, when the lights came on again. Darn. That trick will have to wait till next month.

PREDICTION: Okay, let’s see how right I’ll be. (So far I’m doing better than 50%.) Paulson’s bail-out will pass. There are just too many vested interests on both sides — Democrat and Republican — for it not to. There may be a little shuffling at the edges — perhaps a cap on banker remuneration (with appropriate loopholes in place of course), and slightly more oversight into Paulson shenanigans — but the banks will get their billions of pounds of flesh.

(The ultra-cynical part of me wonders if the conservative Republicans, in particular, are deliberately acting as lightning rods for the population, drawing all public opposition to the plan. This will leave the other Republicans and Democrats free of censure. Then, when the conservative Republicans cave in, after making some pretty speeches, the blame will only be focused on the few (with some deft sleight-of-hand to dazzle the masses) and everyone at Capitol Hill will end up getting off scot-free.)

There are rumblings about the government taking equity in the firms they bail out — a la the Swedish plan — but I bet it will either be vetoed, or structured in such a way that results in yet more taxpayer money being used to transfer ownership completely back into private hands, sometime in the future. (With the stern admonishment that government “meddling” in the market never works, contrary to a large number of other successful, government-entwined economic policies around the world.)

In another interesting aside, Robert Rubin — who helped engineer this current state of affairs way back during the Clinton era — is now one of Obama’s advisors. And McCain readily admits he knows nothing about the economy. Thief or twit, make your choice.