TWO FULL DAYS LEFT.

The LEAVE campaign and the REMAIN campaign seem to have almost equal support. Will anything new be said in the last few days? The strategists have stuck so far with The Economy for REMAIN and Immigration for LEAVE. Presumably they have identified target groups where these are the things that matter most. Do their arguments […]

A TRUTH ABOUT STAYING IN THE EU

here is a quote from a press article today by Jeffrey Sterling. “If we vote to remain on June 23, does anybody seriously believe that Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande will happily hand over the EU steering wheel to Britain so that we can guide it towards reform? The reality is that we will be […]

AFTER IN/OUT – THE PSYCHOLOGY

In the debate about our referendum too little thought has been given to how we will react after the choice is made. An OUT decision will present big challenges and there will be an obvious need to make positive and effective changes. That will be stimulating and unifying  We have stood on our own before […]

PUTIN AND POWER

There is extensive news coverage about Ukraine and Putin’s land-grab of Crimea. What will happen next, and why? It is pretty clear that nobody is going to start a shooting war to stop him. Not the EU and not the USA. Putin knows it. The politicians and the commentators talk a lot about economic sanctions […]

BRITAIN, SCOTLAND AND EUROPE

Right now some Scots want out of Britain and some Brits want out of Europe. The arguments for and against an independent Scotland seem very complex and will never be proved either way because you can’t go back afterwards and try the other thing. But I can understand the emotional need for an independent identity, […]

IN AND OUT IN POLITICS

The Daily Telegraph today reports a prominent Labour politician expressing uncertaincy about where his party is going – what it stands for and what it wants to achieve in society. It has long seemed to me that the deep-down difference between Labour and Conservative is that the former believe in Collectiveness (quite natural given how […]

ECONOMICS YET AGAIN

Budget Day, and not much evidence that anybody – including the Chancellor of the Exchequer – really knows what to do. So the non-expert can fall back on what he thinks is common sense. How did we get into this mess? By paying ourselves too much money for doing too little work. So why not […]

ECONOMICS AGAIN

The argument is renewed. Cameron wants deficit reduction. Cable wants borrowing to invest. Borrowing is fine if you are confident that the activity on which you spend that money is going to earn you more than you pay out. This was very clear to me fifty years ago when contemplating a machine purchase for a […]