A letter to the Editor of the Sunday Times which was published on 24th March 2013

The news reported in your business section (Sunday 17th March) that the government is preparing to sell the UK’s stake in URENCO, the nuclear fuels manufacturing business, while foreshadowed by many hints, is still shocking.

For all its talk of rebalancing the British economy towards manufacturing and exports, here is another British hi-tech manufacturing asset, with an order book in billions of pounds, about to join that other former British nuclear asset, Westinghouse, in foreign hands. Those who claim that ownership of productive assets doesn’t matter, only their location, couldn’t be more wrong. Where forward planning and investment is concerned, foreign owners always give priority to the interests of their home countries, even if many British corporate bosses do not.

Your article predicts that there will be no British bidder. The Canada Pension Plan, Canada’s largest private pensions manager, is weighing a bid for an energy asset which will yield a steady long-term income in a rising market – perfect one would have thought for a City-based pension fund. All the signs are though that the City will not rise to the occasion, prompting the question, “what is it for?”

A letter to the Sunday Times which was published on 17th June 2012.

There is more than a whiff of establishment defeatism about the suggestion by Clive Cheesman, Richmond Herald at the College of Arms, and Lord Forsyth that Britain would need to abandon the Union Jack as its national flag if Scotland were to sever ties with it (“Bye-bye, blue”, News, last week).

The Union Jack, the quintessential symbol of Britishness, is the most recognisable flag in the world. Should a tiny majority of the voters in Scotland vote for independence, it won’t deprive the rest of us in Britain and elsewhere of our right to keep and treasure our flag as it is.

In any case, there are millions of Scots living in England and as expatriates abroad. It is not obvious that they would exchange their British citizenship, with all the protection that it provides, for a new Scottish citizenship.