Monthly Archives: November 2008

I have been reading the Sunday papers about the economy and wonder why I bother to. Several of them rightly condemn the government for borrowing too much, but they all use Ministers’ own figures in the press releases and budget statement rather than reading the much larger and doubtless more accurate figures they had to [...]

Readers of this site will be hearing a lot more about this new “arm’s length, commercial” company “wholly owned by the government” (on behalf of you and me, the taxpayers, who are paying for it). It has been set up to own our shares in RBS, LLoyds/TSB/HBOS, Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley. It will [...]

I was pleased to see David Cameron speaking out in the News of the World today concerning the defence of our liberties through Parliament. The silence of the Prime Minister is eerie. I seem to remember him telling us he wished to re-estabish Parliament at the centre of our political life. We all looked forward [...]

I hear this morning he is drawing up a list of companies that the government would need to assist if they get into financial difficulties. PLEASE DON’T. Such a list could only be damaging. If it got out it could start a run on the share prices of certain companies. It will divide the business [...]

A democracy needs a strong Parliamentary Opposition to flourish. Democratic governments should seek to defeat their Opposition in open debate, and by following policies which are demonstrably in the interests of the majority. They should not seek to prevent, stifle or subvert the Opposition by undemocratic means. Most of us want to live in a [...]

Long may he continue to do his job as Shadow spokesman, telling the truth as he sees it. He has my full support.

In recent days governments around the world have come up with proposals for large reflationary packages of extra spending and lower taxes. At the same time we have heard about an additional potential $800 billion of support for the US banking sector, as the Paulson plan morphs for the fourth time. Governments are making it [...]

If the government now wishes to get tough on leakers, there is plenty for it to do. It might also help to start targetting the people with access to privileged information about important issues who leaked it in the first place. The government should open enquiries into two very important sets of leaks that moved [...]