Monthly Archives: July 2011

             The dreadful  news that five people have died in an NHS hospital probably owing to tampering with a saline drip has profoundly shocked me. People are at their most vulnerable when they go into hospital. They have to trust the caring staff, and expect them to administer proven treatments with high quality medical [...]

  The winners last night at the EU summit were the Greek army. Today they can relax. Their future wages are now going to be paid by more EU loans, at lower rates of interest. The losers last night were the French and German taxpayers. They have to lend more to Greece, for less return. [...]

  It’s ground hog day again. Do you remember last Spring when the EU came up with a package of loans for Greece which would solve the Greek problem? Do you remember the EU package for Ireland, to recapitalise their banks and to prevent contagion spreading? Do you recall the Portuguese package, to ensure problems [...]

              The list of media executives and journalists the PM has met since taking office should have come as no surprise. Mr Blair and Mr Brown did similarly.             I am not a bit worried that the PM had a meeting with Guardian, and two meetings with the Trinity Mirror Group. I am sure [...]

             The IMF has asked the EU to get its act together in tackling the debt issue. It was the right instruction to issue, but doing so in public just served to remind investors of the mess, helping send markets down more. Last night Wall Street rallied a bit  on hopes that US politicians might [...]

  The markets answer to the new EU bank stress tests yesterday was brutal. The cost of borrowing money for Spain and Italy soared. More rumours circulated about the difficulties of some banks borrowing the money they need to c arry on. There was a general mood that the EU authorities were still not taking [...]

                 I am interested in Mr Miliband’s radical idea that we might need tighter rules on media ownership and market shares. It will be interesting to see how he defines unacceptable levels of control, as it appears  that the BBC has the largest share of the TV and radio market, and also has a [...]

            I think it is a pity public spending rose by 5.3% last year. I  favoured starting the five year deficit reduction plan with a year of smaller increases in  spending in cash terms and set out suitable ways of achieving this . I tried to persuade the government to do this.  The government could have [...]