The decision to play the 2022 in Qatar in Winter has  attracted a lot of controversy – it is a a small authoritarian state with no previous interest in football, rampant misogyny and brutal homophobia.   Giving the World Cup to Qatar would be like giving it to Putin’s Russia or Mussolini’s Italy.   Except… Read More Qatar World Cup | Empire and Slavery

Austerity is back.   The Government this week announced  £55bn of tax rises and spending cuts.   Some of the pain has been deferred to after the next General Election, but pain nonetheless.    This was the 5th major announcement by a Chancellor this year, from our 4th different Chancellor.  Once again the British economy… Read More Return of Austerity | Was George Osborne right?

Three stories have broken in recent weeks about security breaches at the top of Government.  Suella Braverman has been reinstated as Home Secretary less than a week after she resigned for serious breaches of confidentiality with secret documents. The extent of her breaches are not yet clear, nor is the extent of involvement from MI5.… Read More Security breaches | 12 years of sloppy Ministers and Russian money

A month a go I wrote a rather unflattering blog comparing Liz Truss with Jeremy Corbyn – 2 party leaders loved by their party activists, but not by their fellow MPs. Since them a few newspapers have picked up on the similarity: Recent opinion polls show the Conservative trailing Labour by 20-30 points, some of… Read More Liz Truss and Jeremy Corbyn | Part 2

I started to write this blog when the Government was announcing the financial support package, but developments with Trump over took me.   I’m glad I waited until after the mini-budget because the speed of events has meant that anything I had written previously would be out of date by now. Lets go back one… Read More The cost of Lizzing | The end of an era in Economics

Amongst all of this weeks budget announcements, one stood out to me – more sanctions to force people on benefits to take on more hours: This is the familiar story of the benefit trap – people are better off on benefits and there is no incentive to seek work, in this case more work. It… Read More The Budget and Benefits | 12 years of expensive failure

Is Donald Trump a fascist? Donald Trump spent most of this week in court, facing charges of mishandling state secrets, and massive tax fraud. Other courts cases are pending, criminal and civil in New York and in Georgia. Instead of being angry with Trump Conservatives in the US have been in a state of fevered… Read More Is Trump a fascist? | Where fantasy, history and desperation coincide

Apologies again the the odd quiz title….