Lobbyists expect to escape the consequences of their actions. Only politicians are held accountable by being sacked at elections. But we need to find new ways to hold to account the organisations that influence government.

They seek them here, they seek them there, those dastardly illusive statistics! Is the UK economy going up – or down? House sales – sliding or plummeting? Sales in the High Street – buoyant or in melt-down?

Several years ago a colleague persuaded me to write a lengthy briefing paper for economists at the Treasury, explaining the tax policy that would favour investment in the built environment. By then, I had given up on Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Still, I wrote a detailed exposition of how to convert taxes that damage the economy into revenue-raisers that ran with the grain of enterprise. Straightforward, I thought.

 

The report was followed by a meeting. We sat in the room off the Chancellor’s office. Brown was absent, and the session was convened by one of his trusted policy advisors. Shriti Vadera pointed to a vacant chair, which she said had to be left vacant out of respect for the man who promised to banish boom/busts. The irony was not lost on me.

People listen to George Soros because he has made a lot of money out of the markets. Didn’t he gamble with the Bank of England, in the early 1990s, and walk away with the jackpot?

 

So when he says that the financial regulators operate with “a false interpretation of how financial markets operate,” we have to listen.

A new property scam is brewing in the Iberian peninsula. Now that the sharks have lost their commissions from selling off-plan (often illegal) properties to mugs in Britain, their cash-flows have dried up. But they have worked out how to turn the cash-taps back on.

Ireland has been an economic backwater for two centuries. Under British colonial policy, history (literally) was made to pass it by.

 

A near-century of independence from the UK made no difference. So incapable was the Republic of engaging in the prosperity of the 20th centrury, that millions migrated to foreign lands in search of jobs.

Don't despair homeowners - the good times will soon bounce back – if, of course, you believe Oxford Economics (OE). The consultancy commissioned to gaze into its large crystal ball for the National Housing Federation.

My language is intemperate – forgive me, but having just read the words of Britain's foreign secretary, I feel livid that politicians dare to treat the British public with such contempt.

Much needed scapegoats are being hunted by bankers who are losing tens of billions of dollars - the credit rating agencies are high on their hit list.

 

These agencies base their scoring system on principles approved by the same economic ideology that has trapped the world into the current financial mess.