Frank’s Blog

The Churches’ Conservation Trust is forty years old this year. Set up as a joint exercise between the State and the Anglican Church, and financed from tax payers and the church commissioners, the Trust now is the custodian of the some of the finest examples of British architecture over the last 1000 years. It is impossible to understand England without understanding its history, and its history cannot be fully understood without the role churches have played in building up our…

I have always been a natural optimist about Israel’s future. Just as I have been a supporter of that country’s independence for as long as I can remember. But how much longer can Israel have an independent future? I was struck by how many Jewish friends now believe that, metaphorically speaking, Israel will be driven into the sea at some stage, and perhaps quite soon. Whether the Americans would allow that scenario to take place is of course another question. That Israel’s

Last week’s National Institute of Economic and Social Research finding makes grim reading. For the last quarter the economy declined by 1.5%. Should this rate continue for a whole year (nevermind escalating) the fall in national income in this recession will be greater than in 1931 which is now regarded as a depression or slump. What Governments can do in the face of such a large economic decline is limited. The one thing they can do is to try and manage expectations so that a…

In the pit of my stomach I feel a deep unease about the Government’s strategy to counter what is euphemistically called a recession. I suppose the main cause of my anxiety is what might best be described as the Government’s inability to appreciate that there is a psychological side in economic activity, and this side is never more important when an economy may be going into deep recession. One way of describing this would be for the public being caught in a mighty huge panic. The…