The Government keeps telling us the UK economy is in great shape. It rather depends what they mean. Retail sales seem to be holding up quite well. Manufacturing shows signs of responding to the exceptional opportunities offered by the low pound. Shares are high and property prices may be off the boil although still simmering. Wages in […]
It appears that a coherent and well rounded programme to tackle the very serious problem of childhood obesity (with crossovers into adult obesity) has been watered down on the orders of 10 Downing Street on the grounds that necessary and urgent sanctions could dent the profitability of the food industry at a time when the economy […]
As the Blog has already noted, by conventional measurement, long experience and shrewd arithmetic, the Trump campaign has crashed and Hilary is a shoe in if she does not trip up or bust a heel before November. However there is a growing unease that polls and suchlike are not telling the true story because Trump […]
This blog rarely comments on sporting events because it has no expertise to bring a new angle to discussions. But the Olympics are special and what is happening in Rio is very special. I was brought up and lived most of my life on a diet of consistent and continuous Olympic disappointment. There was a […]
This blog does not claim knowledge of Labour’s Rule Book nor the workings of the NEC. It takes an outsider’s view of the spat over who can vote in the current leadership election. It just seems peculiar that people who joined recently and have paid their membership fee on the expectation that they would get […]
At first splash this looks good news for Smith and a setback for Corbyn. But when you look at the figures it is almost at the level of a stunt. There are some 641000 members of this Union. Just short of 44000 took part in the ballot. That is less than 7% of the membership. […]
The message here is short and sweet. The B of E could not buy enough of yesterday’s quota of government bonds because there were not enough sellers. Bond yields have gone negative. We have said before and will say again the critical management of the economy is the political responsibility of the government and not the central […]
The disconnect between the PLP (and the outgoing National Executive) and the the Labour Movement, which is by far the largest political force in the country, is now all but unbridgeable, whoever is leader. This latest appeal against a common sense judgement in order to deny votes to legitimate members over a later change of date […]
Like everybody else this blog is fiercely hostile to doping in sport and favours severe censure of those who engage in it; not just the competitors, but the dopers who feed them and the systems which allow it to happen. But it is not right to punish the innocent because some, even most, are guilty. […]
The shock resignation of Judge Dame Lowell Goddard, the New Zealander heading up the vast Child Abuse Inquiry seems hard to fathom. But she is the third Chair of this inquiry which has hardly begun its public hearings to go. That tells us more about the inquiry than its chair perhaps. At the time of […]