Matthew Lynn says Britain’s largest building society prospered by refusing to follow fashion — while its bolder, greedier rivals have all gone bust or been taken over Over the last 25 years, Aesop’s fable of the tortoise and the hare has been a poor guide to financial markets. As the swashbuckling investment banks rose in
People who are infuriated by the huge sums paid for stuffed animals in tanks and the adulation heaped on Francis Bacon’s squiggly horrors should grasp that there is no reason or logic in aesthetics. Andy Warhol, no mean exponent of effrontery, if not of skill, summed up the game for all time: ‘Art is what
This is getting serious — so serious that I’ve done something I may have cause to regret terribly a year or two hence. I have sold my shares in Lloyds TSB. I did so with a heavy heart, and an even heavier loss, since they were bought when the shares were yielding 7 per cent,
Why do men want to rule the world? The question is prompted by the British Museum’s exhibition of objects from Hadrian’s day. They have gone to a lot of trouble. Worth it? Hadrian was one of those supremely busy, and colossally boring, people who crop up on history’s pages to puzzle us. He had been
The US Treasury chief sees his interventionism as a case-by-case response to unprecedented events, says James Doran, but his critics see it as inconsistent, dangerous and ‘un-American’ It’s hard to keep up with Hank Paulson, the grim-faced US Treasury Secretary and would-be architect of a new financial order. Over the past eight months, since the
We live in frightening times. Markets are in freefall; economies are in turmoil; the financial system is on the brink. People want simple explanations and easy answers. They want to know who to blame for the mess and what can be done to clear it up. Just as well, then, that there is no shortage
Stop throwing bricks! You might hit a bishop’s niece ‘Damn! Another bishop dead!’ said Lord Melbourne in 1834, adding, ‘I think they do it to vex me.’ The departure of one bishop meant he had to make a new one, and that involved writing (in his own hand, for security reasons) disagreeable letters on matters
Edie Lush attends the record-breaking Sotheby’s sale of Damien Hirst’s artworks, and wonders whether it is all a metaphor for the recent madness of financial markets Last Monday was a historic day. Lehman filed for the biggest bankruptcy in history; the insurance giant AIG teetered on the brink; the Dow had its worst day since
Today’s Friday so we must be in Spain Recently a Syrian lorry driver, making his cumbrous way across Turkey and Europe to Gibraltar, and following his satellite navigation system and online mapping service, found himself in Lincolnshire, on the Gibraltar Point Nature Reserve. These devices cannot make allowance for monoglot ignorance and soggy IQs of
My one regret at having retired from the National Health Service is that I no longer receive official circulars. I used for a time to derive a small secondary income from publishing them; and such was their idiocy that very little commentary on my part was required. They spoke for themselves; it was money for
Martin Jacomb assesses the extent of the damage to the banking system so far — and the effectiveness of responses by central banks, regulators and lawmakers Will it be short and sharp, or drawn out and deep, with lasting damage? A recession is upon us, but no one knows its path. Its course and its
If Britain’s housebuilders really want to sell more homes, they ought to slash their prices rather than lobby the government for packages like last week’s ill-conceived attempt to boost the property market. That’s what the rest of us have done, but while prices of all other houses have plunged, new homes have still been selling
When is too old? When too young? Almost every day I hear a story of someone, at the height of his power and energy, being compulsorily retired at 60. Or there is a fuss because a girl wants to get married at 15. I recall that Lydia, youngest of the Bennet girls in Pride and
Labour’s climate change levy has led to lower emissions, says Elisabeth Jeffries, but can the Conservative alternative yield better results — or command business support? There are many ways to eat a potato: chopped into chips and deep-fried, baked in the oven or slivered as crisps. Not many consumers care about the dozens of ways
When I first experienced literary life in London it was 1955 and poor Anthony Eden was prime minister. His delightful wife Clarissa was to be seen at literary parties and, amazingly enough, still is. The great panjandrums were Cyril Connolly and Raymond Mortimer on the Sunday Times, Philip Toynbee and Harold Nicolson on the Observer,
Judi Bevan finds her local Lidl discount store full of bargains — but not Boden-clad middle-class shoppers Intrigued by reports that the middle classes are shopping at the German discount stores Aldi and Lidl — and even stuffing their purchases in Waitrose bags — I set off to track them down. My nearest Lidl is
Neil Barnett says the miners’ union that took on Margaret Thatcher and lost is now talking surprisingly good sense about Britain’s future energy security The National Union of Mineworkers’ headquarters in Barnsley has a splendid retro feel. In the assembly hall hang banners celebrating the struggles of the working class: from one of them, Arthur
The credit crunch reaches the home of the rotten apple and the ‘Rolexo’ watch James Gregory Pool III is an elderly, stooping Canadian with a most un-usual job. Every month he boards a plane from Canada with 200 sedated heifers and flies with them to Almaty to beef up and variegate Kazakhstan’s breeding livestock. He’s
The spectacular increase in scientific knowledge during the last hundred years tempts me to ask: cui bono? We now live on average twice as long as in the early 19th century. But what does our ability to repair our bodies and fend off fatal diseases do except prepare us for a long twilight of Alzheimer’s
I think I should abandon the world: I am too easily irritated by it. I should follow the example of Xavier de Maistre, brother of the brilliantly reactionary philosopher, Joseph, and stick henceforth to my room. In his Voyage autour de ma chambre, de Maistre tells us that by describing his journey he is offering