Sochi’s spotlight reveals the rottenness at the heart of the Russian body politic
Imagine if the BBC’s excitable commentators had been asked to cover the building of Sochi’s facilities, rather than the Winter…
We optimists aren’t always wrong but I’m keeping watch for black swans
A reader likens me to Dr Pangloss, the quack philosopher in Voltaire’s Candide who insisted that ‘all is for the…
A man who creates 1,000 rewarding jobs out of a £1 bet deserves to win a fortune
At a charity lunch in Manchester, I meet a cheerful ‘engagement manager’ from AO.com, formerly Appliances Online, a fast-growing internet…
The halo slips further
Tom Bower’s first biography of Sir Richard Branson, in 2000, was memorable for its hilarious account of the Virgin tycoon’s…
Ed Balls doesn’t care what you and I think: he’s just tweeting at Labour’s floaters
There were a million people who voted Labour in the 2005 general election but not in 2010, when the party…
The hapless stationmaster watches France’s future prosperity depart
I’ve always respected stationmasters, but that sentiment is not universally shared. A distinguished friend of mine across the Channel described…
If a bank looks dull, it probably isn’t: so what’s new at Standard Chartered?
The cautionary tale of the Co-operative Bank, its black hole and its naughty chairman has recently taught us that if…
Brand loyalty, or lack of it: why I’d rather run Marks & Spencer than Tesco
This first working week of January is apparently the time when we’re most likely to think about a change of…
Making the best of an imperfect world: a vision of the future from my hospital bed
I blamed the pheasant casserole, but I did it an injustice. Its only contribution to the drama behind my disappearance…
The Dordogne
Call me a trencherman or worse, but I tend to think of the Dordogne as a giant restaurant-cum-farm shop, set…
The ghosts of crises past – and the gambler’s strategy for crises to come
Top of my Christmas reading pile is Saving the City by Richard Roberts, a new account of the largely forgotten…
Over Staffordshire hills in search of the beating heart of industrial England
‘If I can’t see a factory from up here,’ I mutter to myself, throwing the car round an uphill bend…
The monster in our midst
Do you love Amazon? I have to admit that I do, and that I buy books from it far more…
The naughty Methodist is a comic sideshow: it was professionals who ruined the Co-op
The naughty Reverend Flowers will be a comic footnote in the history of the financial crisis — but no more…
The real luck of the Irish is that they recognised the folly of the boom
My man in Dublin calls with joy in his voice to tell me ‘the Troika’ — the combined powers of…
The moral of the Co-op Bank’s ruin: good ethics can lead to bad lending
‘Satan seizes control of saintly bank’ would be a fair summary of much of the coverage of the deal that…
Arise, Sir Jim: Grangemouth’s offshore billionaire is an industrial hero
You know my theory that Unite leader ‘Red Len’ McCluskey is a Conservative secret agent? Well, having watched events at…
A new nuclear plant is better than a stab in the dark
Prediction, as Mervyn King once observed, is ‘a stab in the dark’. Who can say with confidence where the wholesale…
America makes a fool of itself with another episode of debt-ceiling drama
Some say it’s natural optimism that makes the Americans so different from the British, and some say it’s a lack…
Notes on … Skiing in Switzerland
There’s a myth in the Spectator office, which I’ve never discouraged, that I’m Yorkshire’s answer to Franz Klammer — a…
Dickensian misery at the pawnbrokers’ — but now it’s on the other side of the counter
While attention has focused on the sudden ubiquity and alleged iniquity of payday lenders, boom and impending bust has infected…
Freezing gas bills, freezing fuel duty – and one day we’ll all be freezing in the dark
‘We need successful energy companies in Britain, we need them to invest for the future,’ said Ed Miliband in his…
A parable of human weakness
Fred Goodwin’s descent from golden boy of British banking to ‘pariah of the decade’ would be the stuff of tragedy…
Not so much a property bubble, more an opportunity to improve London’s transport
Everyone —including me, if I’m honest — has been talking about a new property bubble. But is it for real?…
Twitter looks much more expensive than Royal Mail, but which one will last longer?
Royal Mail delivers to 29 million UK addresses; last year it generated £9 billion of revenues, of which £324 million…
