Martin Vander Weyer

If the phrase ‘stranded asset’ hasn’t yet entered your vocabulary, here’s a useful example of what it means. The 178 million barrels of oil in the Cambo field west of Shetland may stay there for ever because of government shilly-shallying over whether and when to end exploitation of the UK’s remaining hydrocarbon resources — while

‘So you think it’s all over? Ho ho ho!’ That’s the message from Satan’s dark laboratory (twinned with Wuhan’s) where the Omicron variant turns out to have been bubbling in its test tube while we dared to resume our normal lives during the autumn. But whether that ugly little globule ruins Christmas or proves to

Are you logged on to Klarna, Clearpay, Laybuy or Zilch for your Black Friday shopping binge — or are you an old-timer like me who still uses traditional credit cards and even sometimes tries to pay for purchases in cash? If those four brand names meant nothing to you, you are yet to join the

The scrapping of most of the eastern leg of HS2, originally planned from Birmingham to Leeds, is a news item that’s been waiting like a crowded train stuck at a vandalised signal while ministers squabbled over which cheaper substitutes might appease competing pockets of ‘red wall’ voters. Likewise the ‘Northern Power-house’ high-speed line from Manchester

I have observed before how useful really big numbers can be in response to crises: when US treasury secretary Hank Paulson unveiled his $700 billion Wall Street bailout package in 2008, an aide famously let slip that the number had been pulled out of the air because it sounded reassuringly huge. Now we’re told that

China’s failure to bring anything new to COP26 surprised no one. The world’s worst carbon emitter offered no advance on President Xi Jinping’s earlier promise to reduce coal use after 2025 and bring overall emissions to a peak in 2030 — thereby negating for at least a decade much of the rest of the world’s

Climate emergency demands action, not rhetoric. So, on the eve of COP26, which UK news item promises to deliver the most positive impact for the future of the planet? Not, I suggest, Sadiq Khan’s extension of the Ultra Low Emissions Zone to the North and South Circulars, imposing stinging costs on owners of older diesels

Does the economist David Blanchflower — who I described as the Bank of England’s ‘resident wacko’ during his 2006-09 tenure on the Monetary Policy Committee and who later served as an adviser to Jeremy Corbyn — have a former pupil on the editorial team of the Today programme? I can’t think why else he should

If there’s anyone in Britain who knows how to keep grocery shelves stacked, it’s former Tesco chief executive Sir Dave Lewis, who has been named as Downing Street’s ‘supply chain tsar’. Application of Tesco’s mastery of logistics and fierce discipline on suppliers should keep delivery trucks moving, so long as they have drivers. But even

‘Blame it all on business’ was the Tory strategists’ answer to petrol queues and the risk of a no-turkey Christmas that threatened to distract the party-conference faithful from adulation of the Prime Minister. As spin, it might have been shocking if it wasn’t so familiar. But as an explanation of the supply crisis, the idea

A worthwhile policy proposal amid the Labour conference dogfight? Now there’s a surprise. But shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves’s scheme to freeze and eventually scrap business rates, in the meantime boosting high-street survival by raising the threshold for small business rate relief and incentivising re-use of empty premises, was the brightest moment of the Brighton event.

Will my bath water still be hot by Christmas? That’s not a question I’d normally feel a need to share with you, but shortly after this morning’s ablutions I read that Bulb Energy — the UK’s sixth-biggest energy supplier with 1.7 million customers, including me — ‘is seeking a bailout to stay afloat amid surging

I’m hugely enjoying meeting the finalists for The Spectator’s Economic Innovator of the Year Awards. This year’s bumper entry was strong on paths to decarbonisation — as you’d expect for the new era of climate action — and on ventures rocket-boosted by the pandemic, whether designed to take pressure off the NHS or in the

Late-breaking exam results: many of the City’s top fund managers have failed a vital test of ‘stewardship’ — defined for this purpose as ‘the responsible allocation, management and oversight of capital to create long-term value for clients and beneficiaries leading to sustainable benefits for the economy, the environment and society’. That mouthful comes from the

This is getting serious. Never mind global shortages of microchips, plastics, copper and container ships; now we’re running out of pigs in blankets. The British Meat Processing Association says its members are so understaffed that annual production of 40 million packs of this popular pork item for the Christmas market is under threat. The British

The Hundred — some sort of pimped-up cricket tournament, I gather — passed me by entirely, but I’ve been admiring the spin bowling of the Clayton, Dubilier & Rice team in another big contest, namely the bid battle for Morrisons. When CD&R made its initial 230p per share offer in June, there was much talk