I’ve always believed that fairy tales have a role in understanding the contemporary world, and therefore of politics. This sounds a little sceptical or satirical, but I don’t mean it like that. You can use fairy tales as a positive way of extracting the underlying...
Take the NHS for example. The political narrative is always about the dearth of resources available – and of course this is bound to be a problem. But it is odd, nonetheless, given that so much of what needs doing requires no obvious training – visiting,...
We don’t live in a very literate age when it comes to economics. There are still people in Whitehall, even the Treasury, who believe that somehow – if cities decline or fall, if one place succumbs to grinding poverty – that is it the ‘market’ that did it....
I can’t now find the interview I heard today on the BBC about the prospects of deflation in the euro-zone. I have a feeling it was Gillian Tett. But whoever it was talked about the underlying psychology of deflation. She put it down to apathy. People have to...
Something is in the air. Change doesn’t happen very often, but now it is hard to find anyone who doesn’t subscribe to the following premises: 1. The UK is too centralised and power needs to be handed back to cities. 2. The mainstream economy appears to be...
