Monthly Archives: September 2008

Mrt Clegg will become famous for thinking the basic pension is just £30 a week. He can’t have been doing the shopping recently. It is also time people realised that Mr Cable made an equally serious gaffe, showing he has little understanding of financial markets. He told us that Hedge Fund managers have made money [...]

The meltdown in the markets yesterday saw investors give up on buying shares or anything risky. Wall Street plunged again. Fears are now swirling round yet more large financial institutions, just a day after the announced merger of HBOS and Lloyds. Only a few days have passed since Lehman sought bankruptcy protection before selling a [...]

The big increase in the dole queues today should provide more evidence to all those who think our problem is inflation that our problem is now the downturn. When are the authorities going to realise they need to do much more to limit the damage and to prepare for the eventual turnround?

It is good today to welcome more campaigners to get the Uk building some power stations to keep the lights on. In Crumbling Britain on 5th and 6th August I summarised the case for investing in new energy facilities on this blogsite. The download “Freeing Britain to Compete”, the Conservative Economic Policy document, also states [...]

When George Bush emerged from domestic shadows to appear as a serious challenger for power on the Federal and world stage, he was marketed as a caring Conservative. I remember my colleagues studying what he said, as the cross Atlantic bridge between conservative parties reflected on how to “decontaminate their brands” . The phrase used [...]

Spare us the lectures to be united at a time of national crisis, Prime Minister. Weak leaders make speeches about loyalty, and the need for discipline. Strong leaders listen to intelligent criticism or ideas about better ways of handling problems. Strong leaders unite enough followers by doing and saying the right things about the issues.Weak [...]

The failure of Lehman surprised the markets more than it should have, and left many investors nervous about bank shares and much else. It followed hard on the heels of the nationalisation of Freddie and Fannie, and should be seen as part of the US Treasury Secretary’s strategy to get the western economies and the [...]

The Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England (MPC) failed to control inflation on the way up, allowing interest rates that were too low for too long. The Uk made its own contribution to the world credit bubble, and has its own high inflation as a result. Expect more bad figures today. Now the [...]

I am publishing later this morning some delayed government answers to questions I tabled when we last had a Parliament in this country, which show a jump in the numbers taking early retirement from different government departments. It reminded me that in some cases now we have pay three times over for our government. We [...]