Last Friday the Daily Telegraph ran a story headlined “Farmers’ anger grows as Australian beef floods into Britain”. It took a couple of days for the usual suspects to pounce on this, but once a few did the rest piled in. Various halfwits and attention seekers rushed to trumpet this story as fresh evidence that … Continue reading Where’s the beef?
Category: Applied economics
Why the Bank of England should sit tight this week
The UK interest rate decision this week is finely balanced – so much so that I was not even sure which way I would vote. Nonetheless, over the course of writing this piece I have persuaded myself to switch to ‘no change’, even though the actual decision is still likely to be a cut. This … Continue reading Why the Bank of England should sit tight this week
Schools presentation on the Budget
In case of wider interest, here are the slides from a presentation I gave today to A-level students of economics, business and finance at an (excellent) academy school in Strood. The talk was facilitated by Futures For All (aka Speakers for Schools). Schools presentation on the Budget (Dec 2025)Download
Four reasons to resist the siren calls for a new ‘customs union’
The Liberal Democrats have long argued in favour of some new form of ‘customs union’ between the UK and the EU. But it now appears that key figures in the Labour administration are swinging behind the idea as well, including the Prime Minister’s chief economic adviser Minouche Shafik and Treasury minister Torsten Bell. These two … Continue reading Four reasons to resist the siren calls for a new ‘customs union’
Plain-speaking Economics 