An examination by Robin SmithFairtrade is popular with consumers who like to support ethical trading. The aim is that third world farmers should get a better deal. There is nothing wrong with that. But it does no harm to look at these things more objectively.

Where has PRUDENCE gone? What happened to the GOLDEN RULE? Wasn’t it a shame to sell half the nation’s GOLD RESERVES at the bottom of the market at an average price of $285 a troy ounce whereas now it is standing comfortably at well over $1,000? Above all, what happened to the boast to have ended the cycle of BOOM AND BUST? Article from the latest issue of Practical Politics continu...

Arguments about how car parking space should be allocated, and to whom, is one that seemingly goes on for ever. It would help if the parking issue was recognised for what it really is – a market in real estate.

An article in the Guardian today notes that there are an estimated 1m empty homes in the UK, and about 3,000 of them in the Central London borough of Westminster. Some of them, in Mayfair, are mansions are worth as much as £50m, even in their dilapidated state. Many of the biggest and most expensive are owned not by dusty old dowagers down on their luck but by mystery investors hiding their identities...

A few months ago, we published a piece questioning the value of the Gross Domestic Product as an index of well-being, and noted the harm done when GDP growth became an objective of government policy. Our scepticism about the value of the GDP figure is widely shared.

Now that so many countries are officially in “recession”, the main effort of policymakers the world over is to re-establish economies on a path of “growth”. The measure of success here is Gross National Product (GNP),  the value of all goods and services produced by the people of a nation. But how much more growth is possible? Or desirable?

Jonathan Guthrie writes in the FT today “Birmingham was a cradle of the industrial revolution. But neighbourhoods such as Washwood Heath now feel more like its grave. The last of Washwood Heath’s three big factories is on the brink of closure. Unless a buyer rescues LDV, which has 850 staff, the van maker expects to enter administration on Wednesday. “Economists once theorised...

With the recent confirmation of construction of a 19km long bridge from Puttgarden in Germany to Rødby in Denmark, to be finished in 2018, one of the last train ferries will come to an end. A Danish IC3 train from Hamburg to Copenhagen is seen here on the car deck of the Scandlines ferry. Passengers who enjoy the 45 minute crossing and the comfortable ferry with on-board restaurant may not appreciate...

The recovery will look like “an inverted square root sign,” said billionaire investor George Soros said on Monday. Soros, speaking to Reuters Financial Television, said. “You hit bottom and you automatically rebound some, but then you don’t come out of it in a V-shape recovery or anything like that. You settle down—step down… The healing of the banking system and housing...

We have argued from the start that the policy of lowering interest rates and loosening monetary policies  could lead to inflation. This is compounded by the state of the British government’s finances, with falling tax revenues and rising welfare costs as the economy shrinks down. Damian Reece in the Daily Telegraph writes,