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Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. When I grow up, I want to be a builder’s merchant. Said very few school children ever. Apart from the ones whose family name is over the door, I suppose. Even so, I …

And did those feet in ancient time, Walk upon England’s mountains green? For a party that started out as the champion of the downtrodden worker, the Labour Party is rather fond of gold. As in Golden Rules which have to be met before certain things happen. In some cases, these …

The best way out is always through. There are times when the world seems to be very precariously balanced on its axis. A big nudge one way or the other and it could all go spiralling off course, heading to the oblivion, metaphorically speaking, of the nearest black hole. The …

Whoever is detected in a shameful fraud is ever after not believed even if they speak the truth Open the Money/Personal Finances section of any Saturday or Sunday newspaper, and there’ll be an article about fraud. Increasingly though, it’s not big budget company fraud, where insiders deal secrets and scam …

There is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats Imagine if you will, that most bucolic of images: Cambridge/Oxford, boater-wearing Sebastian Flyte-types punting their way along the Cam/Isis, impressing the tea-frock wearing girlfriend languidly trailing her hand in the river water …

We go to gain a little piece of ground, That have no profit in’t but the name I was at a few lunches in the run-up to Christmas (a hard old job, but someone’s got to do it) at which one of the topics under discussion was the “structural reorganisation” …

My way in life lay stretched out straight before me through the newly-entered road of apprenticeship to Joe I’ve been hearing, and writing, a lot about apprenticeships in the past couple of weeks. Not only was the first week in March designated as National Apprenticeships Week, but I also went …

Home life ceases to be free and beautiful as soon as it is founded on borrowing and debt. The UK housing market is like one of those plants with massive long, deep-set roots, that burrow away and puts up shoots all over the place. Yet it’s in a mess. Although …

For what were all these country patriots born? To hunt, and vote, and raise the price of corn? I remember Budget days when I was growing up, adults glued to the radio announcement – no live TV coverage in the 70s – to find what was going up – usually …

Like most of those who study history, Napoleon III learned from the mistakes of the past how to make new ones. Pop Quiz hot shots: What had an investment of £1bn, yet in the first eight months has only achieved less than 1% of its stated aim. Go on I bet you can’t. …