These days a tinfoil hat is essential headwear when listening to BBC news.  Conspiracy theories of the Trump-Russia and Corbyn-antisemitism type are the order of the day; while government propaganda is largely regurgitated without question. One result is that the BBC’s flagship Radio 4 Today programme has lost more than …

Equating money with wealth is among the most dangerous delusions currently afflicting humanity. This is, perhaps, understandable given that so few people now have access to money in the quantities needed to improve their lives. Government, meanwhile, effectively lies when it points to the various pots of money that it …

Have you noticed that children are looking scruffier these days?  You may, perhaps, have kept this observation to yourself.  After all, kids are supposed to run around getting dirty, right? But your first impression turns out to be correct.  Children are a lot dirtier and a lot smellier than they …

Upmarket restaurant chains Gaucho and Cau have become the latest victims of Britain’s retail apocalypse after their management was unable to find a way out from under a mountain of debt and complex legal structures, according to the BBC.  What is notable about the failure of these restaurants is that …

Given the current fashion for hurling the words “fascist” and “Nazi” at anyone we happen to disagree with, it is worth remembering that the Nazis were elected to government (as the largest party) in 1932.  Not that they would not have seized power by other means in future if need …

Volume one of Das Kapital was the final work produced by Karl Marx.  Volumes two and three were completed by Friedrich Engels from Marx’s notes.  According to the Grundrisse – literally the “blueprint” – Marx had intended to produce ten volumes that would describe how the industrial economy worked. The …

Despite its usual economic cheer-leading, even the BBC is forced to lament that: “UK productivity shrank in the first quarter of the year and continues to lag rates achieved before the financial crisis in 2008… The Office for National Statistics said productivity fell by 0.4% compared to the final quarter …

These days, the UK government’s Business Secretary, Greg Clarke has the appearance of a man who has stared into the Abyss and seen the impermanence and futility of existence.  Just two years ago, when he was given a business brief that included the old department for energy and climate change, …

It is something of a truism that rising energy prices cause inflation throughout the economy.  This is because while this is correct at the macro level, it tells us very little about the details.  Exactly who will shoulder the costs?  Which countries and which sectors of the economy will be …

There were two messages on the back of Melania Trump’s now famous jacket (no, one of them was not an Italian fascist slogan).  The first was the one aimed at the US media – “I really don’t care; do U?”  That is, in the age of 24 hour news and …