Monthly Archives: April 2010

Dear Shareholder, I have been a bit busy preparing for the Board elections. I did run rings round our competitor Conco by keeping them waiting before letting everyone know when the polls are going to be. When I heard that Conco’s CEO was planning to fly everywhere I came up with the great idea of [...]

So by general agreement Nick won. He certainly suprised me. He took my breath away: he was clearly the most highly spun and the most misleading. His pitch was “Trust me, I am the only honest one. I am different”. So let’s have a look at one of his crucial answers to establish trust. His [...]

I predict the debate will be dull thanks to the format agreed,with each spokesman avoiding major error. I am not expecting much difference as a result. What matters is what each party intends to do – there is more to be teased out of each manifesto. Promotoed by Christine Hill on behalf of John Redwood, [...]

All the parties are reporting large numbers of people canvassed who say they don’t know or have not made up their minds. The polls are also wobbling about a bit, implying some people are changing their minds. In recent years I have found it more difficult to canvass accurately than it used to be. I [...]

Mr Cable and his friends keep saying he saw the dangers of too much credit in 2004-7. So did the Conservative party and so did many of us watching the build up of the bubble. He was not unique. What matters is the response to the crash of 2007-8, when Mr Cable failed to forsee [...]

Nulabour was Tony Blair’s way of distancing Labour from some of the Marxist thinking that enthused many of its older members and some of its past. The theatrical moment he invented was the one when he struck out Clause 4 from the party’s constitution, removing the promise or threat to nationalise the means of production. [...]

Lib Dems want to spend today telling us the poorest would be taken out of Income Tax under their plans. They are less keen to talk about how they propose paying for that. Their tax policies include: Higher Capital Gains Tax, at rates up to 50% A £5 billion tax on pensions savings A tax [...]

Sometimes it is back to the future. This week brought a strange coincidence to my life. There on the same desk was the Conservative manifesto seeking much wider participation and ownership for all in the life of our country, and there was a request from a Cambridge researcher to expalin the intellectual origins of the [...]

The Conservative manifesto today points us in a better direction – towards smaller government, towards a world where government is more the servant of the people and less the master. Under it people will be able to set up their own school with public money diverted from state schools, vote for a Police Chief of [...]