Any other business

And Another Thing | 2 April 2008

Too early yet to say whether the present financial turmoils will end in a catastrophic maelstrom or simply slip away like an angry tide, leaving puddles. One has no great confidence in the authorities on either side of the Atlantic. Would that J.P. Morgan were still around to take charge of things and recreate order

Is Australia’s economic luck about to run out?

Australia’s residents are fond of referring to the place as ‘the lucky country’ but most are blissfully unaware of the phrase’s origins. ‘Lucky’ was never meant as a compliment. When the late Donald Horne, a giant of Australian intellectual life, conjured the tag in the 1960s he intended it as a putdown: ‘Australia is a

Any Other Business | 29 March 2008

I think I’ve spotted the ‘trash and cash’ merchants, dining at Mayfair’s best tables A posse of hedge fund managers came round to The Spectator the other day, not to indulge in ‘trash and cash’ — or the even less attractive ‘pump and dump’ — but to participate in a breakfast discussion about how they

And Another Thing | 29 March 2008

It would not surprise me if the present Pope, who is a man of strongly conservative instincts but also highly intelligent, energetic and forceful, abruptly decided to introduce women into the Catholic priesthood, and set about this fundamental reform with all deliberate speed. He would be right to do so, for it is urgent and

Bernanke’s war against recession

Guy Monson and Subitha Subramaniam on how the US Federal Reserve is facing up to recession US policymakers are at war against recession. Since January, the Federal Reserve under Ben Bernanke has cut interest rates by 1.25 per cent; markets expect another cut of as much as 1 per cent this week. Such dramatic reductions are

And Another Thing | 18 March 2008

I have no objection to washing up. I prefer it to most other chores. When I was very small my mother allowed me to ‘help’ with the washing up. This meant doing the drying. I got praise for the thorough and conscientious way I did it, polishing the delicate pieces of old china till they

Ross Clark

Tesco, I hate you — and you need to know why

For the vociferous band of Tesco-haters, waiting for the supermarket giant to slip up on one of its own homogenised banana skins has been a long and frustrating business. OK, you can clutch on to the failure of Tesco to achieve the 4 per cent year-on-year increase in sales during the Christmas period which analysts

Matthew Lynn

Has the Celtic tiger lost its roar?

A collapsing property market, slowing consumer spending, rising unemployment and an economy that is fast deflating: that might sound all too much like a forecast for the British economy. But actually it’s a description of the Irish economy right now. For the last decade, Ireland has been the most dynamic economy in Europe, with growth

Global Warning | 15 March 2008

If you would like to see the kind of out-at-elbow tweed jackets once beloved of schoolmasters before they discovered the joys of earrings and the like, and still by far my preferred apparel, you must go to provincial book fairs. They are smaller and less frequented than they used to be. It is a strange

A masterclass with the adventure capitalist

Jonathan Davis talks to globetrotting investment guru Jim Rogers about the bull market in commodities, China’s rise to superpower status — and how America lost the plot ‘What do they know of England who only England know?’ Kipling’s question, with its powerful message that true knowledge of a locality can only come with the perspective

Under starter’s orders

Christopher Fildes on the business dealings at Newbury Forget Cheltenham. That was just a warm-up. The big meeting next week is at Newbury, and it will have everything — fierce contests and driving finishes and bitter objections and stewards’ inquiries and prize-money running well into eight figures — everything, that is, except horses. Trooping into Newbury

And Another Thing | 12 March 2008

The Letters of Lytton Strachey, which I have just been reading, are a mixed joy. Odd that a writer supposedly so fastidious in the use of words should have produced effusions in the 1920s using ‘divine’ or ‘divinely’ half a dozen times in a single letter, just like a Bright Young Person from Vile Bodies.

Do it yourself: the joy of SIPPs

If you think pensions are boring, how exciting do you think poverty in old age will be? I only ask because conventional attitudes to this problematic topic are not just dangerous but also out of date. Most people know that failing to save will not prevent them growing old. Fewer realise how recent rule changes

My daily fix of Markets Live

Neil Collins has become addicted to alphaville’s interactive forum for stock-market watchers There are thousands of websites for anyone interested in markets. You can spend whole days shunting from one to another, blitzed by irritating ads, looking at share prices anywhere in the world, reading opinions expert and stupid, blud-geoned by analysis. Where on earth

The ultimate trophy asset for the new-money elite

Grouse shooting and grouse moors have historically been the preserve of the British aristocracy. For anyone interested in game, shooting grouse is about as good as it gets. If pheasant shooting is a yacht, grouse shooting is a luxury private liner reserved only for the very rich. Owning a grouse moor is like owning a

Global Warning | 8 March 2008

Theodore Dalrymple delivers a Global Warning  It has been shown conclusively that people who listen to the news or read a newspaper at breakfast are more miserable than those who wisely maintain themselves in ignorance. Unfortunately, help for the former is not at hand: one of the main stories in the newspapers recently was that

Martin Vander Weyer

Any other business?

‘Sexual intercourse began in 1963,’ wrote Philip Larkin; consumer debt, with similar connotations of gratification and regret, began in Britain three years later with the launch of Barclaycard, based on the model of the world’s first mass-market credit card, BankAmericard in California, which dated back to 1958. A retired bank manager once told me he

Leadership lessons from Beowulf

Margareta Pagano on why businessmen should watch Robert Zemeckis’ latest film Chief executives under pressure in these gruelling times should sneak out, or stay in, to watch Beowulf, the 2007 film starring Ray Winstone and Angelina Jolie that has just been released on DVD. They could learn what it is to be a really great hero —