Originally published February 2022. Seemingly unused space can be receptacles of history. In the middle of our farmyard sits an empty barn. The footprint is bigger than that of a village church, with chalk block work and the thick flint and brick walls dating back more than 260 years. A Czech refugee, Bruno Pogodin, during […]
Originally published October 2022. A comparison of today’s inflation context vs that of 1970s. Most economists work for financial firms and their interests are served if markets expect low interest rates. Perhaps for this reason, these folk have tended to opine (incorrectly) that inflation would not become an issue. I have the opposite conflict. Since […]
This writer supposes there must be a world out thereworth investigating… Some day, anyway. 2022 has been a frenetic year for markets – watching the Truss debacle bring down the whole economy by unravelling the Virtuous Sovereign Trinity of competent politics, a stable currency and a sustainable bond market it’s taken the UK 500-plus years […]
The first James Bond film exploded onto our cinema screens way back in 1962,but a closer look at this classic can help explain the enduring appeal of one ofthe world’s most famous fictional characters. On the 5th of October 1962, the James Bond film Dr No went on general release across Britain and a glamourised […]
Here’s what we can learn from the build-up to WW2 UK defence minister Alex Chalk visited Rosyth shipyard in Fife, Scotland a few days ago to kick off construction on the second ship in a new class of frigates for the Royal Navy. The navy is buying five of these state-of-the-art Type 31 warships for active […]
Climate change policy has entered a new era. The growing row between the United States and the European Union over the impacts of the new American green subsidy regime makes that all too clear. Yet in many ways, this story is ultimately about China. For the last 20 years, developed countries have used three main […]
Time to buy some discounts to NAV, Blackstone cede 11% and UK planning paralysis What on earth is happening to our planning system? Is it absent without leave? I know it’s a bit of an overstatement to say that everywhere I go someone has a negative story about planners, with notable exceptions of course, but […]
I couldn’t sleep last Saturday night due to anxiety caused by rewinding various lowlights of my long life that hit me like a brick, and I lay in bed and watched the hours go by as I contemplated my imminent demise, leaving my dependents impoverished and homeless. So when the day dawned I put on […]
Originally published October 2022. In what follows, I will do my best to remain as sensitive to the calamitous human toll the war in Ukraine has and continues to take. Do my best to do so, in the context of trying to gauge what impact these shocking events will have on the UK economy. As […]
Originally published November 2022. In his quest to ensure that no pound is left circulating outside of the Treasury’s coffers, Jeremy Hunt is attempting to set out some £60bn in tax rises and spending cuts. This is quite a lot of money, even by the standards of the British state. It’s a little over a […]
