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| Banks are still gambling with the public finances | | Saturday 4th July 2009 | | Stocks of invective are running low. Is there much left to say about banks and bankers that rises above the level of splutter and scream? In the United States, unemployment has surged again, to 9.5%. In Britain, one in 10 of this year's graduates has little or no hope of finding a job. The bankers, aided and abetted by supine legislators, did this. |
| Mimicking markets: is that really a government’s job? | | 12:03am Friday 3rd July 2009 | | Markets, and the people who make them, have been plunging politicians into all kinds of difficulties recently. The global banking market so over-reached itself that governments had to step in and rescue whole institutions from collapse using taxpayers' money. |
| Lessons to learn from this tentative peace | | 12:02am Friday 3rd July 2009 | | Graham Walker
The announcements last Saturday in east Belfast that the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) had decommissioned its weapons, and that the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) had begun the process, were widely welcomed, if somewhat overshadowed by the death of Michael Jackson. However, there was never any expectation of popular rejoicing. Nationalists and not a few unionists believe it was long overdue, but many in the Protestant working-class areas where the loyalist paramilitaries are based remain bluntly opposed. |
| Even tennis seems to be a victim of rackets | | Thursday 2nd July 2009 | | Early in this Wimbledon tournament, more than £1m was placed on one internet betting site on the result of a match between the Austrian Jurgen Melzer and the American Wayne Odesnik. Several leading firms of bookmakers quickly suspended all bets on the match. |
| Hitting the buffers | | 12:01am Thursday 2nd July 2009 | | When National Express outbid competitors for the rail franchise on the east coast main line between London and Edinburgh, in August 2007, passenger
numbers were growing and the economic outlook was rosy. Even so, some commentators thought the £1.4bn price tag for the remaining seven years of the franchise too high. Less than two years later, the projected growth of 9% a year has been reduced to 1% and will decrease as unemployment increases, the operator is pulling out of the contract and the taxpayer must pick up the bill. |
| If you want a real deterrent, take a look at Trident’s cost | | 12:38am Wednesday 1st July 2009 | | The old jokes are the best. Britain deplores nuclear weapons, but must possess them in order to deter people who may not entirely deplore the species-killing art. We never intend to launch our missiles, but think it prudent to give the impression that we might, if pushed, one day change our minds. Just before being rendered into ash, that is. |
| A sad death, yes … but not a global tragedy | | 12:37am Wednesday 1st July 2009 | | Let's be fair, it was a quiet news day. Oh, Iran was still unravelling, sundry economies were still en route to hell in a handcart on which several instalments were outstanding, hostages had been shot, soldiers had been blown up, suicide bombers had committed further outrages and inter alia there was mouth-to-mouth combat in Washington over President Obama's proposals for health care and climate change. |
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