In the present financial uncertainty, people are fleeing to gold for safety. Such is the demand, with soaring gold prices, that banks are charging more to store it, following the surge in demand for precious metals, which has left London, the centre of the global bullion market, short of vault space. Almost all of the major bullion-dealing banks have raised fees since March this year, in some cases...

Britain’s biggest estates are falling into the hands of Russian oligarchs hankering after their own slice of Brideshead Revisited. As another £100m home is put on the market, Observer journalist Tim Adams wonders if the rest of us will ever see over the castle walls.   Article continues here

Who owns the right to catch fish was the title of a Guardian article today. Having caught a few perch from the (very well managed) lake yesterday, each one a decent meal, I thought it was about hobby fishing but the article concerned commercial fishing quotas, which it seems were quietly disposed of by the Labour government in the 1990s and are now being traded.   It is strange how the government...