Monthly Archives: April 2010

Mr Clegg fibs again today. He tells us he would split investment banking from clearing banking to stop another banking crisis. Was he asleep during the crisis? Lehmans went bust – that was a pure investment bank. Northern Rock went bust – that was a pure mortgage bank. Alliance and Leicester and Bradford and Bingley [...]

As predicted here inflation continued to rise throughout Q1, hitting a new high of 3.4% on the government’s own CPI measure (target rate 2%) and reaching 4.4% on the more used RPI. Excluding housing the RPI rose by 4.8%. This means as warned there is a ferocious sequeeze on living standards underway. Wages are going [...]

So the authorities now think it might be safe to fly from Scotland. There is no sign the volcano has stopped or the dust plume has gone away, so there must be a change in the “science”. Or is it just a change in the government’s view, under pressure from the aviation industry? I repeat [...]

The next three weeks could be crucial for Euroscepticism. The polls make consisently clear by a huge margin that there is not going to be the UKIP breakthrough that some crave. The new House of Commons composition is still unclear, but no serious commentator or pollster thinks there will be a single UKIP MP, let [...]

Several airlines report success in flying jets without passangers through areas said to present a danger to planes. Clearly there are pilots and airline managements who think the total ban on flying goes too far. We hear the Met Office has been flying around the UK looking at ash. I can hear some light aircraft [...]

Day after day the Regulators of air traffic tell us it will be another 12 or 24 hours before flights can resume. Meanwhile, perishable goods needed in the UK go bad in foreign warehouses, the flow of time sensitive and high value components for British business dries up, sales personnel are grounded, business executives fail [...]

The latest poll showing Conservatives on 33%, Lib Dems on 30% and Labour on 28% may just be post debate froth. Canvass returns do not show such a Lib Dem surge. It does, however, serve as a reminder that in this election socialism comes in various guises and could do better than Labour’s record and [...]

In the 1970s at the end of a wildly socialist period of Labour government we had a similar problem to today – too few producers. Then it was recognised and led to an important change of government to start to sort things out. All the economic numbers about the UK are currently at misery levels. [...]

David Cameron asked Mr Clegg in the debate whether the Lib Dems had paid back their £2.4 million donation from Michael Brown or not. There was no answer from Mr Clegg. I have been asked to explain the background to this by some voters. To pay for their relatively successful last General Election campaign the [...]