Monthly Archives: June 2008

The hedge fund manager who told the US authorities that the current oil price is twice as high as it need be thanks to speculators, told them what they wanted to hear and made international news. Readers of this blog will know that I think there is speculative money behind the latest rapid rise of [...]

Today’s front page of the Independent shows this government’s list of major projects that it would now like to push through. The paper are right that some of these will prove highly controversial, and some may be misjudged. The overall impression, however, is how few there are after a long decade of practically no expansions [...]

Gordon Brown today launches another fightback. This time he combines concern about the broken society the Conservatives have highlighted with the new wish to shower taxpayers’ money on groups who might then become better inclined towards the Government. The new big idea is to offer money to encourage those on a low income or on [...]

The Poll in the Observer shows how much more sensible the public are about climate change than many of the governments. On a weekend when our Prime Minister jets off to the Middle East to ask them to pump more oil out of the ground to lower the price the public are right to be [...]

Today is great red herring day. The Energy Minister tells us the PM feels our pain when we face daylight robbery at the petrol pumps. The PM is valiantly battling for us and for lower prices in Saudi Arabia. Is this, I ask myself, the same Prime Minister who governs one of the world’s oil-producing [...]

There has been some excellent journalism on the back of Tom Harris’ rose-tinted blog about the economic joys of modern Britain. I marvel at how much he does not understand – his political sense was as lacking as his economic knowledge. The trouble is, we have a generation of politicians brought up in the soundbite-ridden, [...]

What a surprise – the EU has no immediate answer to the “Irish problem”. They should begin by realising they do not have an Irish problem – they have an EU problem. When we cross examined Mr Miliband this week on the subject he both told us they respect the verdict of the Irish people, [...]

It is pathetic to receive confirmation from today’s government spin that this government is more afraid of appearing to be the awkward member of the EU Council of Ministers than it is afraid of being out of sympathy with British electors. Throughout this government’s time in office they have been humiliatingly compliant with Brussels wishes. [...]

The Governor’s speech at the Mansion House last night showed more realism about the situation, stressing the way individuals and families were going to be squeezed by the current economic policy. He did not, of course, venture a criticism of the government for refusing to squeeze the waste in the public sector to take some [...]