Meeja!

- no, not a new comedy double-act, but an annoyingly childish phrase coined by the string-driven thing himself, the BBC's business editor, Robert Peston (aka, in our household at least, as Pesto).

The current economic situation has already spawned a host of annoying jargon - 'credit crunch' for instance. Then we had the stupidly named 'toxic assets' for poorly-rated bundles of USA subprime mortgages. But Mr P has to go one better - I have heard him twice now interviewed about these, and calling them 'stinky assets'.

It's all very well inventing terms for financial instruments that are so complex that even hedge fund managers don't really understand them (Collateralised Debt Obligations or CDOs). But to resort to puerile terms more suited to name calling in the playground is surely a step too far, even for the dumbed-down Beeb? What is wrong with 'dodgy assets' - a term that is already in common use and conveys perfectly the lack of trust in these items?

If you have the time in the next few days, I do urge you to listen again to the interview with Jen Hadfield, winner of this year's TS Eliot Prize, on the Today Programme this morning.

She has a beautiful lilting voice (she lives in Shetland), and the poem she reads about a rock pool I found truly inspirational. A little oasis of serenity in a sea of news about war, violence and economic gloom. Every word and phrase polished like a small jewel.

The photo is mine, and given the origin of the poet, I chose a Scottish one taken in Achnahaird - one of the best beaches in the entire universe.

This plopped (and I use the word advisedly) into my junk mailbox today:

From: Financial Services Authority [Europeanservices@fsa.gov.uk]
To: [photos@lois.co.uk]
Subject: United Kingdom Banking Upgrade !

Dear United Kingdom Banking Customers Upgrade

Due to concerns, for the safety and integrity of your bank account we have issued this warning message.

It has come to our attention that your Bank account information needs to be updated as part of our continuing commitment to protect your account in this year 2008 and to reduce the instance of fraud on banking websites. If you could please take 5-10 minutes out of your online experience and update your personal records you will not run into any future problems with the online service.

Once you have updated your account records your bank account service will not be interrupted and will continue as normal.

To update your Bank records
Please Click Here [http://210.73.226.8/securityupdate/]

Four you safety we will save ur ip adress

Thank You.

Accounts Management As outlined in our User Agreement, Your Bank will
periodically send you information about site changes and enhancements.

What a prize example of incompetent spam: generic and inaccurate addressee, misplaced punctuation, last year's date, no attempt to hide the fraudulent URL, Random Initial Capitals, and an obvious selection of cut and paste from different sources: note the sudden lapse into misspelt txtspk at the end?

Not to mention the fact that the FSA is not known for randomly emailing people about their bank accounts.

I find it depressing that enough people respond to such messages to make it worthwhile sending them. Are people really that credulous and ill-informed?