Economic affairs.

Many people in the creative, inventive and caring industries - the Brightest and the Best - have never socialised with people who openly espouse the Conservative cause, or have only met them to have a row. This why they should expand their horizons..... Read more...

I have been invited to discuss  "Do we need The City?" at  The World Traders' Tacitus Debate 2015, Wednesday 6 May 2015, King's College London. My response is that as an engine of public trust, we don't, because The City says nothing of interest. Read more...

There is a class of Tory who would have liked to believe in a benign Establishment that looked after them, and indeed looked after everyone. Instead, they feel betrayed. Such Tories knew that (expensively and only after a fashion) the state looked after  the poor; but they believed Tories should provide for themselves. By the mid-1990s many such people from every class had started businesses and bought pensions. Many watched their pensions wither, and then were whacked - let alone petrified - by the crash. Read more...

I more or less said what I meant to at this event for Christian Aid/JustShare in the lovely St Mary-le-Bow, in the City. Read more...

I contributed to a pre-recorded "package" for BBC Radio 4's Sunday programme on an inter-faith initiative to produce (actually to update) a code of business ethics. This is the sort of thing I mulled-over as I prepared... Read more...

I meant ages ago to write a note about Michael J Sandel's What Money Can't Buy. I read it with mounting irritation and wanted just to mark people's cards as best I could as to what to watch out for when they come to it.... Read more...

The banking crash made us think about short-termism, the alignment of the interests of managers and shareholders, intellectual delusions and much else. At the heart of the problem is an almost philosophical issue as to the role of ethics and personal character at the heart of institutions. Characteristically, I think I have the answer to this.... Read more...

I was invited to debate inequality and bankers' bonuses on BBC Radio 4 Broadcasting House, from the home of W1A. This is what I scribbled down to inform my outing... Read more...

The BBC is likely to become very small, or even disappear, if not paying the TV Licence fee becomes a civil offence (is decriminalised, in the jargon). What an extraordinary turn-up for those of us who thought the BBC an absurdity but also thought that its dismemberment would probably have to wait a generation. That is roughly where I was when I wrote "Scrap the BBC!" in 2006. Here is how things might turn out.... Read more...

I had a fairly decent outing on The Jeremy Vine Show, whose stand-in host, Vanessa Feltz asked me and Philip Lymbery, author of Farmageddon (with Isabel Oakeshott) to discuss the arrival of mega-farms in the UK. Naturally enough, I stuck up for them... Read more...