As manufacturing apparently surges back in the locality (or at least politics surges to make that the narrative despite pesky statistics), to try and perhaps awkwardly bolt together several things: the social economy, the circular economy and the perennial sharing economy (see 23 december 2010, collaborative consumerism). The social is hard to define, but is essentially not for profit companies whose rationale is not to create monetary profit but forms of common good. The circular is the conceptual evolution of recycling, driven by the continual upgrade of consumer products like phones, even as their manufacture drains ever more expensive natural resource. The logic becomes to design products so their parts can be extracted at end of life and reused. As…

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Someone - alright the guardian - has picked up my idea of moving parliament up to manchester. In fairness, I only mooted the house of lords (see 1 november 2014, in scotland’s wake), anyway ripe for transformation into a regional assembly like the german bundesrat, whereas mr jenkins would move the whole shooting match. Hats off to him. The minor wave of agreement to this that has swept the airwaves since the speaker announced the houses of parliament were no longer fit for purpose can be summarised as: you know what, if we were going to move the political capital anywhere it would be manchester – but that’s not really going to happen, is it. Oh well. The narrative rides…

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The brazen murder of boris nemtsov, opposition stalwart, on the eve of a rally that might just have opened up popular criticism of the war in ukraine, does feel a little like an end of the world as we know it moment. Not a sudden drop into the abyss, more like the lobster being boiled alive in slowly heating water. There is a definitive moment when it dies, and historians may look back on today as the end of the collectively-willed pretence of russia as democratic, rationalist and not totalitarian. From that other consequences also come. To alexei devotchenko, natalia estemirova, alexander litvinenko, sergei magnitsky and anna politkovskaya then, we can add boris yefimovich nemtsov, former deputy prime minister, scientist,…

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Greece has folded this hand, but the poker game continues into next week, the summer and beyond. Behind the “who stands to lose more” gamble though, the bigger prize of democracy looks like it is being utterly eroded. Long after matters are somehow settled and greece gets enough help from its european partners to avoid collapse, the inability of its electorate to change anything, despite an overwhelming desire to do so, will be the salient outcome of this crisis. The basis of the last weeks’ drama turns on the age old dilemma of a creditor insisting a debtor stick to the deal it made to get money in the first place. Whilst some blame and risk for making the loan…

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I do try to avoid laundry lists, but it was an interesting week. Tuesday was holocaust memorial day, and my youngest was home from school with a virus. We listened together to my other half singing live on national radio (27th) with her choir. It went very well indeed, and gave an appropriately wide meaning to the day, which I ended at a private dinner with the chinese consul-general. My brother’s wife’s grandma is a wonderful woman, and holocaust survivor, who last week was given the freedom of the city of london, and featured in several newspapers. Wednesday, I was down in london, and friday night my other half and I were invited out to listen to the manchester camerata…

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Many are the doom mongers scenario-planning various outcomes of the imminent greek election, spreading that worst of ailments, uncertainty and panic, around the markets at the possibility of a grexit from the euro. We have been here before (14 may 2012, the unthinkable exit; 16 june 2012, the greek election) and got through, but past performance, as every investor will tell you, is no guarantee of the future. The general relaxed attitude, given that the new greek government seems likely to push for debt forgiveness, seems borderline complacent. My ex-boss lbs provides a very cogent analysis in the ft about why greek debt isn’t, or shouldn’t really be, a worry, but little market or especially political behaviour has much to…

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2014 was, sadly, another year with many contenders. Close to home, fellow-city glasgow seemed specially cursed, suffering three tragic incidents, of a bin-van and helicopter killing several and its treasured art school, which I never saw, burning down. Of a bigger order, perhaps three thousand would-be immigrants drowned in the mediterranean trying to get to europe. Further afield, dozens of students were abducted and murdered in mexico and hundreds of girls in nigeria were kidnapped from school, still months later missing. Trouble is rising from lawless belts across the world, the middle east probably the worst, with isis crossing several lines of barbarity in syria and iraq, a vicious crackdown in egypt, itself provoking a backlash and libya…

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One of the many prongs of the european populist uprising (see 26 may 2014, eurosclerosis) is protest against globalsation, the cutting edge of which is ttip: the transatlantic trade and investment partnership. The basis of this treaty is relatively simple: easier trade between nations creates efficiency and raises productivity, so increasing gdp. As europe and the us are still the world’s biggest trading blocs, and involved in a majority of world trade, easing trade restrictions would help both, raising eu gdp by around 0.4%. Most restrictions are simply down to different standards and testing regimes. Harmonisation would make things both cheaper and, in theory, better, as the best method should win out. For europe there’s a bigger game, in holding…

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Palestinian liberation had two basic phases: violence, characterised by gross massacres such as the avivim school bus bombing and munich and negotiated settlement, of which oslo was the apex. As that froze and fizzled, the palestinians zig-zagged between the two tactics; the hamas gaza break-away kept violence in continuous competition for leadership with the mainstream’s ever dwindling returns from diplomacy. A big chip was palestinian statehood. Yasser arafat stayed his hand for promises never delivered (see 16 april 2011, signing palestine's birth certificate), but more recently his successor, mahmoud abbas, made remarkably transparent, sustained and consensual progress (see 1 december 2012, yet another small step to parastine). When decade-long talks collapsed this spring (see 4 april 2014, timecheck: quarter to…

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