How we let down the diligent folk at the Halifax
I once gave away more money than Andrew Carnegie or Bill Gates. Ten years ago, as a Director of the Halifax Building Society I au...
Taxpayers will fund another run on the casino
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were probably the world’s most heavily supervised financial institutions, subject to a specialist agency, th...
Economic growth can be about better – not more
Gloomy commentators have always argued that scarce resources will halt economic growth and their prognostications have always been fals...
Politicians cannot be trusted to set the fiscal rules
The fiscal framework set out for the UK in 1998 has two principal components. The golden rule states that current expenditure sho...
There are sensible reasons for irrational behaviour
Imagine you are in a helicopter above Los Angeles without a chart and want to fly to Reno, Nevada. In what direction would you fl...
Teaching demands a warm heart and a cold eye
When I was a young Oxford don interviewing admissions candidates three A grades at A level was exceptional, but is now the norm. ...
Statistics, damned statistics and value added
I have been reading a report from the Sector Skills Development Agency (now happily defunct). It claims to compare the efficiency...
Accounting rules for public duty and private failure
For centuries, the Exchequer was a cash box rather than a system of budgeting and resource planning. The job of the accounting sy...
Scotland’s sense of injustice is a blight on its future
Last week, Labour suffered its most crushing by election defeat yet by losing the Glasgow East constituency to the Scottish National Pa...
Brown’s rules are a flawed basis for policy
In 1998, Gordon Brown as Chancellor laid out a long term framework for public finances, based on the ‘golden rule’ and the ‘sustainable...