The Deputy governor of the Bank of England is the latest distinguished authority to raise concern about the house price boom, of which the government is more or less in denial. This blog and others have been warning since 2009 that another housing boom would be a disaster, yet the government has organised a recovery […]
The last reorganisation of the NHS, which has given us Commissioning Boards instead of Primary Care Trusts, has achieved nothing which could not have been achieved within the previous system. This can be repeated backwards through one upheaval after another right back to 1948. There are two problems which override everything. The first is the […]
The news that a Palestinian teenager was seen being kidnapped and that his body, partly burned, has been found this morning is truly shocking. This is clearly a revenge attack. What is also clear is that a rubicon has been crossed when both sides engage in tit for tat violence which involves killing young people out of […]
There are two ways of looking at yesterday’s big speech by ED Milliband. You can be positive and you can be negative. On the positive side it is a sound idea (actually proposed by Lord Heseltine) which diverts money from the financial sector, which is London based, and redistributes it to the regions which are closer […]
Originally published as Downfall in 1995, these new paperback and Kindle editions of one of my favourite works has stood the test of time rather well. I began it late in 1993, completed it during 1994 and it was published in 1995. I dipped into a copy on a recent rainy afternoon and found it had acquired […]
There is no cause which can be advanced by kidnapping and murdering teenagers and the world is united in its condemnation of the perpetrators of this shocking crime, which Israel is satisfied are from Hamas. As expected, the Israeli defence community is planning retribution. The terrible thing is that this will lead to more killing on […]
The British prime minister and the President elect of the European Commission are apparently talking to each other and saying helpful things, in the tradition of consensus democracy, after a bitter personal contest. It has never seemed to this blog too significant who was in charge of what in Europe. What matters is what institutions […]
There is general agreement the Cameron’s defeat is an historic moment but exactly what kind of moment is unclear. Initially hopes are raised that having asserted the right of the European parliamentary majority to nominate the Presidential candidate for the European Commission , EU leaders will wake up to the very real prospect of Britain […]
Many are saying that the Prime Minister has played his cards badly over Europe, even some who basically agree with him. The big mistake was to quit the Centre Right group in the European parliament, thus detaching from the association where plots would be hatched. This has isolated the UK in the parliament itself, leaving […]
This Blog has long been railing about the ineptitude of post 9/11 Western foreign policy (led by the US/UK), of which the mounting chaos in the Arab world and the stand-off in Ukraine are ready symptoms. Now we learn that Syria has started bombing Isis positions in Iraq. So the arch enemy Assad is now on the […]