They Blog For You

Our former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has apparently admitted that the unaccountable quangos he put in place to regulate the banks failed. He's right. His Financial Service Authority spent a decade subjecting every financial institution to a complex web of compliance - so much so that firms had to create entire compliance departments.  [...]

The Banking Commission says its key objective is to protect the UK taxpayer from another bailout. At the same time, they suggest a sort of two-tier system within banks, as opposed to institutional separation. Sounds to me like they're proposing the sort of changes I was aiming at [...]

According to the Sunday Times, Republican front-runners for the next presidential election include Mitt Romney, Donald Trump, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin.  If so, then perhaps that's Obama safely back in the White House for a second term.   Fortunately, in America they allow millions of ordinary folk, not just [...]

The Office for Budgetary Responsibility apparently “needs more time to factor in budgetary changes to their forecasts or risks losing its credibility”.  You mean to say that technocratic experts at the OBR, like those at the MPC, don’t always [...]

Heading over to Holland-on-Sea to prepare for my busy morning surgery, I spotted these glorious plum trees in full blossom. I thought you might like to see them, too.   A couple more days of April sun shine like this, and we could have a [...]

“Absolutely no bilateral bailout” was the Treasury spin 24 hours ago.  Now, it’s all about how we’re “not writing Portugal a cheque”. Choice words, and technically true.  Next perhaps we’ll be spun a line that this is all just “contingent liability”, as if the £2 – 4 Billion at stake [...]

Treasury officials and advisers are “out of their depth” when it comes to handling the Euro crisis, suggests Peter Oborne.  Apparently, despite all the warning signs for months, none of the top officials have seriously thought through what we might do in the event of one or more member states [...]

Five months ago, I forecast that default within some Eurozone countries was going to happen.  Indeed, I suggested Britain ought to encourage certain countries to default - and decouple from the Euro - rather than piling up and parcelling out yet more debt.  How did I come to such a view?  With debts rising [...]

Greece, Ireland, now Portugal ....  Another bailout of the Euro dressed up as a rescue.  Another high interest loan pressed upon European taxpayers, as if that might solve the problem of excessive debt. Over the past year, we have been struggling to save a total of [...]

If unpaid internships are to be discouraged, I presume that the government will now put unpaid Parliamentary Private Secretaries onto the government payroll? Over the past year, an unprecedentedly number of MPs have been made PPSs under the Coalition.  Even quite junior ministers now make use of these unpaid ministerial aides. A internship, or work experience scheme, MPs [...]

Interesting article by Nick Clegg and Iain Duncan Smith on the need for greater social mobility in today's Telegraph.  They are absolutely right to point to the problem.  What bothers me are their proposed solutions, which all seem to be about government doing more. The coalition duo begin their article by accepting that Labour's big [...]

The BBC’s Robert Peston latest blog seems to suggest that politicians should hand over their power to oversee media regulation to state-regulator, OFCOM.  Instead of those we elect deciding things, Mr Peston appears to want “the regulator’s word” made final, “politicians wholly removed from the decision-making process”. [...]

A £ multi million Eurofighter warplane destroyed a second-hand pick up truck in Libya today.  The air strike was called in using high tech smart bombs. "This shows the wisdom of using a £20 Billion weapon systems against [...]

To get a sense of quite how flawed international Human Rights law is, reflect on this; For a decade or so, democratically-elected Israeli ministers have been unable to come to the UK for fear that they might be arrested and [...]

The political elite in SW1 are out of touch with the public on law and order, according to the Sunday Telegraph.  In a poll commissioned by Lord Ashcroft, 47 percent of voters think that no party has the right approach. [...]

"All too often in government the really important decisions slip past you without you realising it, and the true significance of what you have done only dawns on you when it is too late" - Jonathan Powell in The New Machiavelli.Is that what happened with the Euro bailouts? In [...]

Apparently there is to be no deal with defecting Gaddafi henchman, Mr Moussa Koussa. Strange.  I thought HMG had been cutting deals with him and his ilk for much of the past decade.  [...]

We like to think of Britain as a free market economy. But are we? In a little over a decade, state spending as a percentage of GDP has increased from around 35 percent to approximately 50 percent. That's higher than in certain former Soviet republics. It is not simply that so much economic [...]

Another week, another transfer of power to Brussels. Today the House of Commons takes note of approves the "start of a new cycle of economic governance in the European Union .... designed to apply to the EU as a [...]

Last time I watched the TV news, the Libyan rebels seemed to have plenty of arms. When I hear people suggesting that we "arm the rebels", surely they mean we equip the rebels with what they lack;  discipline, training and strategy?  [...]