Property

Vodafone, which has just collected an £84 billion windfall from the sale of its 45 per cent stake in Verizon Wireless of the US, is either a hero or an anti-hero of British capitalism, according to taste. To me, the world’s second-largest mobile phone business is heroic because it achieved that position from a standing start just 30 years ago, when poker-playing Ernie Harrison, chief executive of a military radio manufacturer called Racal, bet everything he had on the future of mobile telephony. At a time when other electronics companies thought it too uncertain a prospect to bother trying to compete against the monopolistic British Telecom, Harrison and his colleague

The mega-rich are best housed behind high fences, on wooded estates patrolled by dogs; that way, they don’t have to annoy the rest of us. But I can see how irritating it must be, if you live in the crowded Ladbroke Grove area of west London, to have a neighbour like Reade Griffith, an American hedge-fund manager who has received planning permission for a vast basement extension to his house that will take many months to excavate. Fellow residents of Kensington and Chelsea, other than those wealthy enough to have similar schemes in mind, will probably think it serves him right that he has been charged an £825,000 ‘Section 106’

Queuing to gain admittance to the pavement of Westminster Bridge on a ferociously hot Sunday afternoon recently, I found myself trapped. Pinioned by a road to one side, a stall selling models of Big Ben and snow-dome Buckingham Palaces to the other, and bordered by the great bronze statue of Boudicca, I was caught in a corralled mass of tourists and going nowhere fast. It occurred to me that the last time I experienced such a peculiar blend of urban misery was in Venice. This might have been the Rialto in August. But it wasn’t the Grand Canal that we were crossing, it was the Thames, and it started me

The long period of dormancy for Britain’s housing market looks as if it is coming to an end — though there are huge regional differences. Central London remains exceptional, with the influx of overseas buyers into Kensington, Chelsea and adjoining neighbourhoods creating a microclimate of surging prices that has little to do with economic fundamentals — and has the political left salivating at the thought of a ‘mansion tax’ on properties worth £2 million-plus, even if that means turfing elderly widows out of family homes. Some five years on from the financial crisis that brought many lenders and house-builders to their knees, there are signs of a broadly based recovery.

Theresa May has called for ‘culture change’ in wider society to ease the equality and acceptance of lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender minorities. Abstractions are the executive’s favoured metier these days. I’ve read and re-read May’s article in Pink News and nowhere does she define ‘culture change’. The end product of a culture change towards LGB&T groups might be envisaged, but how is it initiated? The government cannot answer that question, beyond suggesting that supporting pride marches is positive. True, but society is more than a pride march. It exists in the daily confusion caused by ill-defined laws, such as who B&B owners let into their homes/businesses. Or whether it