Make It Happen, Festival Theatre: whoever in the Edinburgh International Festival’s marketing department compared James Graham’s play on the 2008 collapse of Royal Bank of Scotland to Shakespeare has insulted the greatest playwright in the English language. The production is more Jerry Springer – the Musical meets The Big Short, without the entertainment of the former nor the … [Read more...] about Make it happen: Fred the Shred goes head to head with Adam Smith
Bankers ignore lessons of the past
The ruin of the City of Glasgow Bank in 1878 was the biggest collapse in British banking history – until 2008. Its story contains salutary lessons for bankers in any age.The event was surprisingly full for a cold, wet winter night in Edinburgh. But the Library of Mistakes knows how to sell a good story. “A few months after posting record results a major Scottish bank goes … [Read more...] about Bankers ignore lessons of the past
Rejoin the Sea League and save the seabed
There's a long echoing blast from the past in the Our Seas coalition campaign which launches later this month. Very few – if any – will know it. But the call for trawlers to be banned from fishing within three miles of Scotland’s shoreline is the renewal of a campaign first born 90 years ago. The newly formed Our Seas marine conservation coalition (coastal communities, … [Read more...] about Rejoin the Sea League and save the seabed
Scots pound has a past… but a future?
What currency an independent Scotland might adopt used to be like the number of angels who can dance on the head of a pin – an absorbing problem for fanatics and geeks to argue over, but nothing to trouble the rest of us who have to live in the real world.Has Brexit, belatedly, changed that? Before the 2016 referendum First Minister Nicola Sturgeon asserted that … [Read more...] about Scots pound has a past… but a future?
Lloyd’s losses paid by ‘mass casualties’
Thousands of HBOS employees paid with their jobs and savings. Nemesis, Greek goddess of retribution, did not force HBOS executives to go empty-handed. Peter Cummings received £702,080 as a redundancy payment, Mike Ellis £670,500, Philip Gore-Randall £568,000 and Colin Matthew £656,405.All had also built up large pension funds: Cummings’ £7 million would give him an annual … [Read more...] about Lloyd’s losses paid by ‘mass casualties’