Cameron faces a fight on two fronts against Germany's Merkel

Watch out for those Prussians on the left!

It has become a terrible cliché to discuss Anglo-German relations using World War Two metaphors. But as David Cameron advanced on Berlin for a showdown with Angela Merkel on Friday other military antecedents sprung to mind.

Cameron is fighting Merkel on two fronts. First, he is attempting to resist the tax on financial transactions which the European Union wants to introduce. And so he should. The tax, which is supposed to fund future Eurozone bailouts, will get an estimated 80 percent of its take from the City of London.

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From Miliband and Balls to Osborne: riding our luck in the bond market

Only the second most dangerous type of Bond there is

String theory posits the possibility of multiple universes exiting at the same time and in the same space. Economically we saw a little of that last week.

In London a few thousand students and professional protestors marched against the government’s plans to make them pay more towards their education.

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The European Union would have Pericles turning in his grave

Lo, all their pomp and circumstance...

“We have a form of government not fetched by imitation from the laws of our neighbouring states - nay, we are rather a pattern to others, than they to us - which, because in the administration it hath respect not to a few but to the multitude, is called a democracy”

Pericles spoke those words in 430 BC, at the end of the first year of the Peloponnesian War. In his famous funeral oration he commemorated the men of Athens who had died defending their democracy from the military dictatorship of Sparta, and reaffirmed what they had died for.

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Ed Balls and Irish austerity: what you didn't hear at party conference

May the growth rise to meet you

Ed Balls used to cite Ireland as exhibit A in his argument that ‘austerity’ would cripple the British economy.

A year ago, when Ireland’s economy had just shrunk by 1.2% Balls, then making his unsuccessful run for Labour leader, said

“These figures are a stark warning to governments across Europe including our own. An austerity programme of deep cuts now, when our economic recovery is not secure, risks lower growth and higher unemployment”

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