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The Spectator's Notes

The Spectator’s Notes | 17 March 2007

Every winter morning I take a scuttle down to the cellar, fill it with coal and carry it up to light the fire in my study. The coal-dust clings to my shoes and so, as the carpets testify, I have a carbon footprint. David Cameron wants to make it — and everyone else’s — smaller.

Any other business

Tips from Jamie’s Kitchen

Jamie Oliver would make an excellent investment manager. Not because he’s moonlighting as a private-equity mogul — although his rival influencer of public opinion, the rockstar/philanthropist  Bono, is doing exactly that — but because Jamie knows that in putting together a good dinner, or even a single dish, two aspects are vitally important. All the

Gordon will hang on to his nice little earner

Before every Budget, for as long as memories extend, stock-brokers and fund managers have written to the Chancellor telling him that unless stamp duty on share purchases is abolished, the Square Mile will shrivel to nothing. Nowadays, the pre-Budget report gives lobbyists a second annual opportunity to make these special pleadings, while word-processors have made

The risk of cataclysm has not gone away

Even before the world’s stock markets had their latest wobble two weeks ago, an interesting debate was gaining currency at some lunch tables in the City. As always, the debate in the moneyed classes is primarily about risk. It’s only those without money who spend their time worrying about beating the market and making the

How to avoid the Shanghai surprise

When China sneezed on 27 February, the whole world caught cold. Within a few hours the Shanghai composite index plunged 8.8 per cent, its biggest one-day fall since February 1997, causing Hong Kong’s markets to shiver. The contagion quickly spread to Japan, Korea, Australia and India. Before the day was out, leading stocks in Europe

Technological warfare against mice won’t work. Try cats

Ralph Waldo Emerson is quoted as saying: ‘If a man write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbour, tho’ he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.’ I don’t know about the first two commodities. There are too