Blogs

Most of the houses of the Midland town were of a pleasant architecture. They lacked style, but also lacked pretentiousness Apparently we are in for the ‘biggest building boom in a generation’. Really? Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner talks a good talk on this, but the Planning & Regeneration Bill …

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? Smile, they said. Because things could always get worse. So I smiled. And lo and behold, things got worse. There are …

A man is known by the company he keeps Judge a man, not by what he says, but by what he does, by how he treats others. When Trump was named the Republican party candidate for the US Presidency, when it became clear that Joe Biden wasn’t a shoo-in for …

Home life ceases to be free and beautiful as soon as it is founded on borrowing and debt. It is a truth, universally, accepted, that a journalist in want of a story, must be attracted by tales of bad news as well as good. Bad news is good news when …

Always two there are, a master and an apprentice. It’s National Apprenticeships Week, so it’s fitting that I begin this with a congratulatory slap on the back for the Builders Merchants Federation, which has hit its target of 15,000 by 2030 five years early. With target management like that, there’s …

For there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men I’m not sure what its official name is. But there’s a management technique (not followed by anyone I know, of course…) that is basically “be the biggest a-hole in …

You take my house when you do take the prop That doth sustain my house; you take my life When you do take the means whereby I live. Is our housing sector broken? I don’t just mean in terms of its output, which the last few CPA and PMI surveys …

There will be no day of days then when a new world order comes into being. Step by step and here and there it will arrive So it begins. Yesterday, Donald J Trump managed to do what only one person in the past 130 year has managed to do – …

Preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known Climate change. It’s been a subject of conversation and comment particularly in the last week or so – the events in California and the weather here and in other parts of the States have highlighted our changing …

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering In yesterday’s least surprising news, the worst performing sector of the construction industry, according to the S&P Construction PMI, is housebuilding. Output in this sector has fallen for the third month in a row, and …