Our blogs

A document dropped through my door on Saturday. It was from the Allotments Association asking for our help in protecting the site of 50 allotments in the village.Apparently we need to get our allotments designated as a Local Green Space to protect them from the...

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. However...

I had just finished reading the wonderful second volume of Alan Johnson's autobiography, Please Mr Postman, when an advert popped up on the computer for a company called Doddle. Doddle joins Yodel and Whistl, other delivery companies with babyish names, which are...

Sometimes a good idea turns round and bites you on the ankle. The Chancellor might be thinking this about the Office for Budget Responsibility which he set up in 2010 to provide an independent overview of the public finances . After the 2008 financial disaster these...

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 break...

The NHS and the Government.  Could the NHS end up in a few years time being a franchise,’inadequately overseeing a fragmented and largely privatised service’? Rather in the style of a chain of chicken shops or cosmetic companies? A new report –The Wrong Medicine. A...

Is anyone surprised by the news that Royal Mail profits have fallen by 21 percent in the first half of this year? Before we start to dissect the scandal of RM recent history we have to remember that it is still a very profitable company and its shares are still...

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 devoted to...