“Economics, said Mr Stanley [Oliver Stanley, then President of the Board of Trade], is 50% psychology … What we need, apparently, is not statesmen but hypnotists, not scientists, but witchdoctors, not confidence born of scientific prediction of the future, but confidence created by a political confidence trick. There is nothing surprising in this. It isContinueContinue reading “The Long View”
Author Archives: WR_admin
Sowing Bricks
The Conservatives, one-time party of the countryside, continue to plot their destructive, and self-destructive, course. Planning Minister Nick Boles told Newsnight this week that he wants to concrete-over 1,500 square miles, twice the area of Greater London, though he didn’t seem quite sure of the figures. Never mind. A million acres. Or thereabouts. Did heContinueContinue reading “Sowing Bricks”
Blue Touch Paper
It’s an interesting possibility that those who want a kind of war, on terror, on non-growth, or whatever, are in fact aching for a real fight between countries. War is the dominant thought that occupies their waking moments. David Cameron and his party don’t do morality. The idea of a supposedly ethical foreign policy, with itsContinueContinue reading “Blue Touch Paper”
The Great Dictator
David Cameron told the CBI yesterday that he wants a war economy, with himself as Winston Churchill, to pull the country out of recession.Of course, it’s all ridiculous, prep school nonsense. The only real war is being fought by British troops in Afghanistan, despite public opposition. No-one in the UK is going to be shotContinueContinue reading “The Great Dictator”
Winners & Losers
Writers on Bristol, from the Rev. George Heath in the 18th century to Bryan Little in the 20th, have seen in it ‘the London of the West’, a city that would dearly love to outshine its larger rival but is not above copying its every move. So ‘a Boris for Bristol’ stands firmly in thatContinueContinue reading “Winners & Losers”
Mud, Blood & Poppies
Last month we commented, with due acidity, on David Cameron’s £50m plan for a great national festival to mark the centenary of the Great War. Marking the anniversaries of momentous events is not in itself a bad idea. But in this case there are three things wrong with its implementation.The first is the political agenda ofContinueContinue reading “Mud, Blood & Poppies”
No Heritage Soon
Where did the inspiration come from for our National Health Service? Historians have a habit, given that Nye Bevan was a Welshman, to look to Wales, to the miners’ and metalworkers’ mutual aid schemes at Tredegar and elsewhere.Wessex has at least as good a claim. The Mechanics’ Institute at Swindon, opened in 1855 and paidContinueContinue reading “No Heritage Soon”
All At Sea
Cornwall is bigger than Wessex. Yes or no? It depends on definitions. Land area is one thing, but there are some rights of sovereignty that extend out to the 200-mile limit of the Continental Shelf. And it’s not just sovereign states who have clearly demarcated areas of seabed to their name. So do the devolvedContinueContinue reading “All At Sea”
Seizing Power
Those old enough to remember the world before it went completely mad may fondly recall nationalisation as an inspirational idea incompetently implemented. Good, in theory, because it allowed democracy to be extended into the field of economics, so that choices can be determined by intelligent debate rather than by a mindless love of money. Bad,ContinueContinue reading “Seizing Power”
Keep Calm And Cut It Down
So Andrew Mitchell has at last resigned over his altercation with a police officer in London’s Downing Street. Those who battled in vain to defend him helpfully stressed how stressful the job of helping to run the country is just at this moment.Then why not make it less stressful by spreading the workload? Alex SalmondContinueContinue reading “Keep Calm And Cut It Down”
Wessex Regionalists 