I will be giving a lecture in the Old Library at All Souls College, High Street Oxford at 4pm on Friday 25th November.
You cannot ignore the government debt markets for long. They have a way of muscling into the economies and the political stories of western Europe. We need to get up to date with the interest costs each country faces for borrowing money for ten years: Greece 29.02% Portugal 11.28% Ireland 8.2% Italy [...]
The statement yesterday from Mr Cameron that cutting deficits was difficult was taken by the media as a sure sign that the government will report slippage in its programme of getting the deficit down. The FT led with the view that it will now take well into the next Parliament to eliminate the [...]
The Navy is a paragon of virtue compared to the army. Now that there are just 31 warships (destroyers and frigates and submarines), there is a mere one Rear Admiral per ship. Most of the ships are commanded at sea by Commanders or lower ranked officers. Very few Captains go to sea in [...]
Amidst all the spending increases of the last two years, the MOD has been the subject of cuts. We have been told these are deep and damaging. We have learned that we will have fewer tanks, ships and other military equipment. We read of redundancies for troops. I decided to ask a few [...]
I met representatives of the local NHS management today to hear how they are getting on with the changes planned for the local NHS. They reported that all was going well. I asked that as the service is reorganised, could they put the interests of patients first? There have been disturbing national stories of [...]
The UK enjoys six months chairing the European Council which supervises the Human Rights Court and Convention. The UK is seeking amendment to the current system, to try to return it to the original intentions when it was set up after the Second World War. The idea was the member states [...]
I attended the Wokingham Councillors’ surgery on Saturday morning in the Town Hall. I stayed with the 7 Councillors for two hours. Very few people came to meet us. I find it is best to have surgery appointments arranged through the Wokingham office on 01189 629501 at a time convenient for the constituent. It can [...]
I have found there are are least 87 examples of countries leaving currency unions and establishing their own money since 1945. In most cases establishing an independent currency allowed the country concerned to set more sensible interest rates and exchange rate to help them grow. In every case it gave them more independence, strengthening [...]
The UK’s foreign policy objectives are currently very muddled. The UK wants the Euro area to adopt bond buying and quantitative easing. This would delay but not prevent the ultimate crash of the Euro. It would mean bigger debts and more unemployment by the time Greece and other weaker members are finally driven out, or Germany [...]
John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College, and has a DPhil from All Souls, Oxford. A businessman by background, he has been a director of NM Rothschild merchant bank and chairman of a quoted industrial PLC.
