Month: June 2015

Greece: How Much Longer?

June 13, 2015 By Malcolm Blair-Robinson

It is difficult to find a rational explanation about the never ending saga of Greece hovering on the threshold of Euro membership. Certainly it is guilty of a reckless period of spendthrift abandon. But that is in the past. When dealing with a whole nation of people you cannot proceed as if with one errant […]

The Battle of Orgreave

June 12, 2015 By Malcolm Blair-Robinson

I never voted for Thatcher but I did support her reform of trade union practices which had got out of control in the 1970s and were crippling the country to the detriment of everybody, including trade unionists. Arthur Scargill was a hero to some but to the majority he was an inflammatory hate figure. So […]

City Ethics: The Governor Speaks Out.

June 11, 2015 By Malcolm Blair-Robinson

Mark Carney is normally measured and careful in his pronouncements; a caution here, a warning there, encouragement too. This made his outspoken attack on the low life ethics in parts of the City, the flaws in markets driven by excess, the controls and penalties which would in future be enforced and above all the demands […]

Royal Bank Of Scotland: What Value?

June 11, 2015 By Malcolm Blair-Robinson

The Chancellor’s announcement that he would start selling RBS shares at a loss caused the biggest stir in a fairly meaty speech yesterday at the Mansion House. His convoluted arithmetic that overall the taxpayer had made a profit out of the bank rescue programme was a pointless argument; not least because had the banks not […]

Osborne’s Laws

June 10, 2015 By Malcolm Blair-Robinson

First we have a law to say that the government will not increase income tax or VAT. Now we are to have a law that says governments must run a budget surplus in ‘normal times’. There are two thing s say. These laws are meaningless in that any government can repeal them at anytime. They […]