I DON'T really understand money. It's in my pocket, then it's not, having slipped into some third dimension behind the sofa.

It goes into my bank account, then evaporates into the over-mortgaged ether. Notes placed in my slim wallet wriggle out through an unseen black hole at the back.

However much goes in, there is never anything left. It is usual enough for money to disappear in this fashion, I know, and it happens to everyone. It also happens to governments, although they have a lot more of it to lose.

One of the most puzzling aspects of the Blair years, and the dreary Brown addendum we are living through, is that the money has been spent - spent with giddy enthusiasm - and yet still it disappears down the back of the nation's sofa.

You can't question the motives or the good intentions; it's just that nothing works out as it should. New Labour pledged to save the National Health Service and, to be fair, much effort has gone in that direction. So, too, has much money.

What untold sums. The health budget apparently now stands at £97 billion, which sounds a lot, even to a man who can't balance his own bank account. Chancellor Brown and his replacement - you know, the white-haired chap with fighting ferrets for eyebrows; Alistair Darling, that's the one - have spent our money generously, if not always wisely.

The NHS is beset with problems, although it is better than in the tatty Tory days; but not so much better that people really notice. Too many of those endless rolling billions have been wasted on managers and management consultancies, or tied up in complicated private finance arrangements, with hospitals bought on a national-scale version of the never-never.

A huge fortune went, too, on striking a generous deal with GPs, some of whom saw a 60 per cent pay rise for working less. GPs do an important job and, in a sense, are the medical world's equivalent of the local post office, round the corner and easy to find when we want them. Yet what have we gained from their increased wages? Hard to say.

Now, as the Government ploughs untold billions into creating a political management culture where no one seems to get the blame, and where everyone involved can retire on a fabulous pension, house prices have started to fall, just to depress everyone further.

In truth, the house-price panic can be overdone, as in the Daily Mail headline this week which said that monthly house prices had "plunged by 2.5 per cent". Does two-and-half really count as a "plunge"? Not really, but headlines like to plunge or soar, declining less dramatic gestures. Apparently, and how useful that word is to a financial incompetent, the fall-out from the US mortgage crisis could run to £500 billion. And all because greedy bankers arranged more or less worthless mortgages for poor people who couldn't possibly afford to pay.


* TWO more things. Thanks to our graphic artists for removing the upper reaches of my head in the new design above. Men with deforested scalps like to keep the top of their heads out of the public gaze. Also, following a reprint, I shall again be signing copies of my York-based novel, The Amateur Historian, at Borders in York on Saturday, from 1pm to 4pm. My debut opus is a crime/historical story, published by Quick Brown Fox Publications and set in York, both in modern times and in 1901.

Concerning the case of a missing girl and a race through history to try to save her, it introduces the Rounder brothers, sibling rivals, one a top cop in York, the other a private eye. Please feel free to drop by for a chat and maybe even to buy copy.