Foreign Policy I simply do not know why anyone thinks David Milliband would be a good Leader of the Labour Party. Ed maybe but David no. He is one of the worst Foreign Secretaries in our history with a narrow blinkered view of the world, lacking in strategic focus and forever falling back to promote […]

Manufacturing There are signs that firms are repatriating manufacturing to the U.K because greater efficiency, improved quality, lower transport costs and greater reliability of delivery make this country once again a competitive manufacturing base. This is a profoundly good piece of news for the potential quality of economic recovery and of huge strategic importance to […]

Execution Death in any form brings sadness to family or friends however it occurs. Accident, enemy action and execution are among the sudden brutal endings of life which give rise to especially high emotions of those left to grieve. I did not follow the case of the unfortunate man executed by China today, so I […]

The Delta Flight. Phew! That was close. Outstanding responses by passengers and aircrew were remarkable. A miracle malfunction of the suicide bomb underlined the proximity to disaster that stalks every airplane. What is good is the level of effort that goes into counter terrorist activities by all the security authorities world wide. Focused as we […]

Railways One of my Christmas presents this year is a series of three maps, all covering the same area, but based on Ordance Surveys of the early and late nineteenth century and the nineteen twenties. It is immensly interesting to study these maps of a rural area in southern England and compare one period with another. […]

Saving I read yesterday that the U.K has become a country of net savers, by the biggest margin in history. In fact most of this is going to debt reduction, but it is nevertheless the best news for the future of our economy that we have had this year. It represents real structural change of […]

U.S Healthcare The Senate vote makes this dream of proper universal healthcare in the U.S very nearly real. It will transform the lives of millions. There are yet hurdles to overcome, deals to be done and compromise with the House Bill, before the President can sign it into law. Yet now it is much more certain […]

Snow So everywhere is chaos. Why? Because nowadays everything works to due process and best practice and for snow, because we do not get a lot of it in the south, there is no plan. But I have lived in the south all my life. We used to have snow and coped well enough. We […]

Copenhagen I sometimes feel that we have given to much emphasis to the man made element of climate change, giving the impression that maybe it might not happen if we change our lifestyle. I think negotiations would have been easier if it had been accepted from the very beginning that climate does change, of which […]

The BA Strike As regular readers of this blog will know my views are often leaning left. I am a great supporter of trade unions and believe everyone should be a member. I was myself for a number of years a member of the white collar section of the Transport and General Workers, now enveloped […]