Isn’t ‘underemployment’ a good thing?

Last month’s fall in UK unemployment – by 45,000 – was greeted with puzzled muttering in the media. The economic signals are so muddled that no-one knows what to make of them. According to the ONS, the economy is now shrinking again, but business surveys paint a rosier picture, prompting many

Letter to Beckenbauer

Apparantly Sepp Blatter has asked Franz Beckenbauer to work out how to replace penalty shoot-outs at football tournaments. So I sent him the only solution, just as I did to Sepp four years ago:

Flashman – the liberal conservative

I wrote in the Daily Mail today about how Harry Flashman, the fictional Victorian rogue popularised by George Macdonald Fraser, might not be such a bad role model for David Cameron after all.

The vicious side to local politics – Borders style

The dust is finally settling on the local election campaign here in the Scottish Borders. What started sleepily and continued pleasantly enough (as far as the blustery wet April weather allowed), ended in suprising acrimony.

The Megrahi case epitomises the plus and minus sides of devolution

It’s pretty obvious that the SNP hierarchy doesn’t think that the Megrahi conviciton was safe. The language they use makes this clear: it’s all about sympathy for the victims rather than justice being done to a mass murderer.