Monthly Archives: January 2009

There are two Britains – the public sector and the private sector. Today the Times tries to make out that Councils are about to experience the same bleak prospect for jobs and sackings as private industry and the retail sector, but so far there is no evidence that the public sector faces the same dreadful [...]

The British Chambers of Commerce report today that orders, investment and demand for labour all fell heavily in the last quarter of 2008. This will be no surprise to people reading this site. These declines are continuing in the first quarter of 2009. It is the inevitable result of the monetary policy mistakes of a [...]

Shareholders of the Rock are battling it out in the courts. They say their bank was taken from them by the government, without proper compensation for their interests. The government says their bank was in a very bad way, and has to be valued without the support the government was offering it. I leave that [...]

Alan Milburn has been made the Czar of the greasy pole. It is time more was done to promote social mobility in Britain. My advice to Alan is simple. Do not think the great Universities or the Armed Services want to recruit preponderantly former public school pupils, or that the answer is imposing targets or [...]

The Prime Minister has to show that his jobs programmes are more than just good spin. He would be helped in this aim if he was more accurate with his history. He asserts that previous Conservative governments that went through downturns did nothing. He should remember that, on the contrary, the Conservative government of the [...]

Let me begin today by reassuring the politically correct monitors that I am not in the “Do nothing” camp when it comes to the economic crisis. Indeed, anyone who has looked at this site for the last eighteen months will know I was in the do something camp – cut interest rates, make more liquidity [...]

You couldn’t make it up. After a decade of lecturing us about the evils of using personal transport, and the need to go by bus train or cycle, we now have government Ministers wanting to find ways for us to buy more cars. Furthermore, they want us to do this on borrowed money. I had [...]