Labour has made a mess of its farming inheritance tax idea. It is has backfired badly. At a time when the major priority should be to maximise home production of foods of all kinds, there should be a coherent plan to do so, with an enthused and re-energised farming community on side. Instead, the small […]
Welby was right to resign as Archbishop. Nobody could possibly support his earlier decision to stay on or believe his assertions he did not know years ago exactly what Smyth was up to and what went on in those youth camps when he, Welby, was present. Unfortunately this latest drama in the public life of […]
Money is what any economy is about. Because who has it and what it is used for shapes not only the social structure but also the destiny of the nation. Some countries exercise control of all the financial levers which determine the shape of their economic model and, as already discussed in a previous post, […]
There was a time when debt was considered to be not a good thing. But times have very much changed. Now debt is so much a part of the economic structure that it almost operates as a second currency. Not only is the government in debt, borrowing is also the foundation of business. It is […]
What is money? It is not a thing. It is a measure. It measures values of all economic activity including services, labour, assets, goods, skills, knowledge. This list is another seemingly endless recital. But the key element is that, like centimetres or grams, without something to measure, it has no value in itself. In past […]
Great Britain, as it was then mostly known, was the leader of the industrial revolution. We assembled the largest empire in the history of the world, out of our ability to build ships and railways and every single component of both manufacturing and consumption. Self sufficiency and independence were a given. Now, manufacturing accounts for […]
My holiday from blogging and writing generally is coming to an end. It seems the right moment. Renewal is the political buzz word now. A new government has brought a change of mood. Relief at one level, but anger at another. Public morale is lifted by Olympic medals but is dampened by the realisation that […]
Not yet anyway. Meanwhile it is strikes, the NHS, collapsing concrete, passing the buck, high interest rates, falling house prices or a government of musical chairs unable apparently to get a grip or exercise control. All of this unending bad news stems from two related ideologies. One is that the individual is greater than the […]
There is an unwelcome culture now embedded in the English structure through which the State and its outsourcing satellites runs our public services. Or responds to unexpected emergencies and events. Late or never delivery, cover ups, buck passing and warnings ignored are no longer the exception but the rule. This has to change because while […]
NHS Reports of using spare capacity in the private health sector to help deal with backlogs in the NHS make sense. In the short term this is the obvious route to improvement, as it does not require massive reorganisation of the NHS. To be effective it needs to be disciplined and working to a programme, […]