Monthly Archives: June 2011

  The Euro is now into the phase of its development where people will ask “ Where is the democratic accountability? How does the Euro scheme secure the consent of people under it?” We have witnessed elections in Ireland and Portugal. In both cases the public threw out a government associated with economic failure. In both [...]

            The UK has 2.9 active armed services personnel per 1000 people in the country. Greece has 14.6 active service personnel per 1000 people. The Uk is busily cutting its armed service numbers to get its deficit down. Greece is seeking bail out loans from the rest of us to pay the wages of [...]

              UK governments have a weakness for bail outs which often  don’t work.               Years ago the bail outs went to distressed nationalised industries. Regularly the great state owned companies found they could not live within the often generous totals of money the Treasury offered them. The managements became adept at working out how [...]

               This week the government announced its intention to put through a Statutory Instrument approving £9.4 billion pounds of new capital for the IMF. The draft SI is a very short document, pledging 9.416 billion SDRs. The document does not explain to MPs that one SDR is about the same value as one pound sterling. [...]

                 There are two answers to the cruel questions  posed to Greece by the single currency and the Euro wars. The simple and best one would be for Greece – and a few others – to leave the Euro, re-establish their own currencies, devalue and price themselves back into work.  This remains unlikely, given the [...]

  Letter to Dr Roy Spendlove, Miscellaneous Projects Dear Roy,                I am writing to ask you to accept a revised remit and title for your Division. The Coalition government as you know is dedicated to deficit reduction and to managing the public sector better.  Ministers are worried there will not be enough special projects [...]

                  We hear this morning that the Chancellor intends to take action to prevent a future government bail out of banks. He will have many supporters for his aim.                  We learn that his chosen method is to require the large banks to ring fence their UK domestic deposit taking and lending activities. The Regulators [...]

                 Many busy people only get a bin collection from their Council. They don’t have children at school, are  not around when many of the leisure facilities are open and don’t need social services. Of course we benefit from others  using these services and should be pleased that people in need and pain can [...]

                     Outside central London the commercial property market is not in a happy state. Many of the High Streets I visit have too many empty shops, and too many others let out to temporary tenants on lower rents just to fill them somehow. There are numerous office properties available, with some landlords keen to [...]

                 Understandably there is concern and even fear about the sharp rise in energy prices we are experiencing. It’s been a big enough gas price hike for a Scottish Minister to posture over the topic, and for the UK Parliamentary Opposition to start raising questions. Many of these politicians should be welcoming it, as [...]