Well, that depends who you are, where, your circumstances and your politics. We can all think of the teeming millions for whom it was not a good year at all. This Blog will concentrate on the U.K. The coalition government was a good thing. It has been strong and effective, though recently the Telegraph scam has […]
There have been some disturbing recent figures, ignored by the markets and lost in the snow. None of these is in itself a cause for undue anxiety, given that the economic times are anxious anyway, but taken together they could be a portent of something nasty. The first is that unemployment has started to rise. […]
He has not yet offered to resign. I think he will. When he does it will not bring down the Coalition, but it will change its nature. An unhappy Liberal Democrat parliamentary party, prodded constantly by unhappy activists in its constituencies, will acquire a leader and a spokesman, who is hugely popular in the country, […]
There should be so such thing. There should be Judicial power and Political power.The two are quite different. The first is impartial and is based on the judgement of what is proper within the law. The second is based on the judgement of what is best in the national interest. By its nature the first […]
If there is government by one party, it makes for good order and is in our tradition, for the principle of collective responsibility to apply. It is debatable in a modern world whether tensions known to media correspondents and lobbyists, should be held secret within the Westminster village and not shared with the public, to whom […]
This is becoming a multi-strand political story, with different facets. I intend to deal with each separately. First the media. There is a question of whether it is right and proper to make an appointment to see and M.P., pretending to be a constituent, when one is in fact a reporter wired up with the […]
Vince Cable has been taped saying things about Coalition policies which he thought were private. He was caught by the dodge of wired reporters pretending to be constituents. This kind of sting is now common, though, so far, politicians have not been primary targets. It is part of the same culture as Wikileaks and it […]
This is utterly ridiculous and has rightly been rubbished by both Government and Opposition. The Unions are not the government and are not charged with governing. They thought they were in the seventies and brought the country to its knees, condemned Labour to 18 years in Oppostion and made the passing of laws to curb their […]
We begin to get the picture. The authorities are only partly prepared for snow. They can cope if it is not too bad. When it gets for real, the complexity and inter-dependence of the transport infrastructure, which has cost countless £billions to set up, is not matched by investment in a means of keeping it running […]
The report from the Bank of England underlines just what a mess our banks are in, although it tries to sound cautious and optimistic. Not only are these banks under capitalised for what they do, they owe half a £trillion which has to be refinanced over the next two years. Furthermore the report reminds us […]