London

A bouquet to Alison Kennedy, ‘governance and stewardship director’ at the Edinburgh-based pensions provider Standard Life, for leading the rebellion of Barclays shareholders against the bank’s decision to pay increased bonuses of £2.4 billion, far outstripping dividends to shareholders and despite a fall in profits. At last week’s AGM, 34 per cent of shareholders refused to endorse the board’s remuneration report after Kennedy declared herself ‘unconvinced’ that the bonus pot was ‘in the best interests of shareholders’ and warned of ‘negative repercussions on the bank’s reputation’. As if to prove the latter point, Barclays chairman Sir David Walker responded not by apologising but by expressing ‘irritation’ that Kennedy had spoken

It used to take one hour and forty five minutes to get by train from where I live in Canterbury to central London. Now, as a consequence of HS1 and the rather annoyingly named “Javelin”, it takes a little over fifty minutes. There is not the remotest doubt that the new service has greatly improved the prosperity of the area, and made life more pleasant for the likes of me. An entire swathe of south-eastern England has been suddenly rendered commutable as a consequence – a good thing, seeing the cost of housing in London. (I don’t commute, as it happens, I ought to add.) The trains are frequent, reliable

As Michael Bloomberg approached the end of his time as Mayor of New York, Americans expected him to run for the White House. He had the money, the profile and the ego to be President. But the problem, as it turned out, was his ambition — he had too much of it to settle for the Oval Office. As he put it: ‘I have my own army, the seventh largest in the world. I have my own state department and I don’t listen to Washington very much.’ His ambition, it turns out, was not to be the next President of the United States. He wants to be Mayor of the World.

Everyone can see that the West has no idea what to do about Russian power in the Ukraine. Britain, in particular, is at the margins. It is time for the Mayor of London to fulfil his historic role of stealing a march on more conventional politicians. Boris should take a leaf out of President Putin’s book and call a referendum of Londoners. He should ask them whether they would like all Russian housing in London to be seized, and be inhabited, instead, by British families. I predict a Yes vote whose percentage would exceed even that of the recent Crimean plebiscite. Obviously the Mayor, unlike Putin, has no military forces

How easy is it to buy your way into the British establishment? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, Harry Mount and journalist Ben Judah discuss whether Britain has become a bankrupt country. Why are so many Russians throwing hordes to cash to buy their way into new Britain? How are Prince Charles and Tony Blair involved? And is it a good thing that the establishment is regenerating itself? Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman also analyse George Osborne’s fourth budget — what the announcements mean, the winners and losers, how the Chancellor has carefully targeted Ukip, the significant changes for pensioners and Ed Miliband’s meek response. Plus, Fraser

Knowledge can be successfully transmitted and received only by those who recognise its value. If our governments have regarded education as valuable, however, it is usually as a means to some political goal unconnected with knowledge. As a result, our school system, once the best in the world, is now no better than the average developed country for numeracy and literacy. Many on the left see schooling as a form of social engineering, the purpose of which is to produce a classless society. Equality is the real value, and when knowledge gets in the way (as it often does) it must be downgraded or set aside. Many on the right

No-one should be surprised that Standard Life has warned it might leave Scotland should the country vote for independence later this year. It is not exactly a secret that Edinburgh’s financial services industry is concerned by the possible – indeed plausible – implications of independence. The suggestion – sorry, the threat – that it might leave Scotland is already being characterised by nationalists as yet more bullying, this time of the corporate rather than political kind. No doubt this is a blustering bluff too.  But what if it isn’t? The sorry truth is that Edinburgh’s financial sector is not quite what once it was. The Bank of Scotland is a small part of the