The latest predictions from the Bank of England will come as a disappointment to many economists, but they should not come as a surprise. When this crisis broke five years ago, I predicted it would take a whole generation to correct. This ultra gloomy view came from my own conviction that the economic model to […]
The failure of the Tory party to back the House of Lords reforms marks an interesting watershed in the life of the Coalition. From now on neither of its two parties thinks much of the other. It was never a marriage, but more of an affair. Now the attraction is wearing thin. There will now […]
It is difficult to comprehend that the European Central Bank cannot follow up the bold declarations of its president that it will do ‘whatever it takes’ to secure the euro with anything more dramatic than a statement that it is ‘working on a plan’. Really? The inability of the euro authorities to turn words into […]
The heat threatening to fry George Osborne’s chancellorship will ease following the thumbs up from Standard and Poor’s. Nevertheless he must use the respite to set his political house in order. The budget was the biggest PR disaster since Geoffrey Howe’s extra dose of Thatcherism in the early eighties. Howe was attacked for dogma, but Osborne’s problem […]
Nearly two decades ago my youngest daughter was at primary school when her mother and I became concerned with her having difficulty with arithmetic. She did not appear to know or be taught either her tables or simple long division. We went to see the Headmistress. We were told over coffee that our ideas were ‘old […]
There have been some encouraging shifts in both US and UK foreign policy under both Obama and the Coalition, which have generally improved the international standing of both countries since the Bush/Blair era. However this trend for improvement has been reversed over the Syria issue. Here the fault lies not so much in the hostility […]
There has been an interesting thread running through the various high profile interrogations by Parliamentary Select Committees as well as the appearances at the Leveson Inquiry, which leads always to the same place. It is not a good place. It is the place of third rate leadership. It matters little whether it is a newspaper […]
For several days this story has had wings and more recently we have seen footage of groups of people undergoing some form of training before taking up their duties of guarding Olympic venues. G4S has suffered a public relations calamity, its Chairman refuses to back its Chief Executive, the Home Office is again in the firing line […]
The new lending scheme initiated by the government through the Bank of England is imaginative and offers the kind of initiative which, properly used, will help the economy. The key phrase is ‘properly used.’ We know that there is mounting anxiety that the crisis in the euro zone is stifling the recovery in the U.K. […]
Once again violence has flared as the so called ‘marching season’ gets under way. These protestant marches are all part of a ‘marching tradition’ we are told. Maybe so. This does not make it right. On a recent visit to Ulster I was struck by the sense of hope and engagement at every level and […]