Some thoughts

  Why is Britain poor? - Ed West reviews a paper on why everything takes so long and costs so much.  There are some truly shocking stats, but this one takes the biscuit: ‘ the planning documentation for the Lower Thames Crossing, a proposed tunnel under the Thames connecting Kent and Essex, runs to 360,000 pages, and the application process alone has cost £297 million. That is more than twice as much as it cost in Norway to actually build the longest road tunnel in the world.’ The first thing we need to do on gaining power is blow up the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act (TCPA). The case for prisons - The Inquisitive Bird gives detailed evidence on this, and why removing some wrongun's from circulation benefits the rest of us: 'nearly a third of shoplifting arrests in 2022 involved just 327 people, who collectively were arrested and rearrested more than 6,000 times.... 2020, three prolific burglars were on the loose in Leinster, Ireland. Together they had accumulated over 200

Yesterday The gold price reached an all-time high (Homer Simpson voice: "So far"). As the Royal Mint's latest bulletin  summarised:  Gold surged past $2,580 for the first time on Friday afternoon. In USD terms, gold is up 24% since the start of the year. You'd be forgiven for thinking that this means it's a bad time to be buying, however, there are a couple of exceptions that I'm going to explain in this post (all prices correct as of 14/09/24, but rounded up or down as appropriate). First of all, are you looking to invest or collect? I do a bit of both, (silver more for collecting) so I tend to buy what interests me and what I consider to be a good deal. There are two types of businesses I buy from, bullion dealers and collectible coin sellers. Of the former, I usually use Chards and Bullion by Post . The former is usually slightly cheaper, but they charge for postage and capsules, so I usually buy from them if getting multiple items. The latter gives free p